When Dan Herman founded IT/Healthcare consulting firm Aspen Advisors in 2006, he set out to create a firm that would help executives make difficult decisions and manage large-scale technology-enabled projects, particularly on the clinical side, where Aspen strives to help healthcare providers reduce costs and improve patient care. Herman likens the firm's leadership team to a multi-specialty group physician practice, with each bringing a diverse and specific set of skills to the table. The combination of the varied skills of its team and a focus on culture have paid off for the young firm, which has gained plenty of attention, garnering accolades from KLAS and Modern Healthcare, and allowing Aspen to add 23 new clients in 2011 alone. He sat down recently with Consulting One on One to discuss the firm and its new clients.
Consulting: You experienced tremendous growth last year, adding 23 new clients. How much of that do you attribute to what's going on in healthcare and IT right now?
Herman: When I talk to people and tell them what I do, they always say "business must be booming." My response is always, business has been really good for the last 30 years in Healthcare/IT. I think over the last several years with American Recovery and Reinvestment Act, Meaningful Use and ICD-10 and consolidation in the industry, there's clearly been an uptick in the last three years or so. We're certainly seeing lots of demand right now around the push for meaningful use of Electronic Health Records, both in the hospital environment as well as a business environment.
Consulting: What are all these new clients demanding?
Herman: I think the big area is strategic advice, which is our sweet spot. I was just with a prospective new client who will likely be starting out in a couple weeks and meeting with the executive team. There are some key decisions to make with their current IT portfolio, their investment in EHR: Do we stay the course with current vendors? Do we focus on consolidating across our health delivery system? What do we do with physicians? What is the executive's role in realizing value from significant IT investment? I think one of the biggest areas of demand we're seeing is the planning and assessment category, which is really helping executives, physicians and boards make difficult and politically charged decisions with respect to IT in the use in the organization.
Consulting: Could you talk a bit about your expanded leadership team?
Herman: Our leadership team is very wide and diverse. I say we run the organization more like a multi-specialty group physician practice; we have different specialties and very diverse constituents. We've added several people to the team this year, four in particular: Jody Cervenak comes to us from University of Pittsburgh Medical Center, and has 18 years experience as a CIO for a very large physician group practice. Bob Schwyn is leading our reform practice, formerly a CIO, and a consultant and has a lot of diverse experience in planning, in interim management as well as IT service management. Marty Belscher, also a former consultant and CIO and is leading our practice in the northeast. He's really focused on expanding the practice in the New England area. Dr. Mark Van Kooy is a physician, a clinical informaticist and a practicing physician. He's served as chief medical information officer in a multi-facility health system and is leading our clinical informatics practice.
Consulting: What is it about Aspen's culture that has gotten it so much attention?
Herman: The challenge is always finding good people that fit our culture, fit our values and can support our clients. I think we've done very well and have created great culture as a result. We were named in the Top 20 places to work in healthcare in 2011 by Modern Healthcare, we're also recognized by KLAS, the Consumer Reports of Healthcare/IT, as a Top 3 firm for planning assessment and in the Top 5 for clinical systems implementation. I think our key philosophy here is: focus on the client, do what's right for them, do what's right for our folks. Put the right people in the right roles with the client and the revenue growth and recognition will come along. But that sort of recognition is not why we're here, we're here to serve the healthcare industry.
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