Considering we're still in the midst of a global pandemic with a lot of uncertainty ahead, healthcare consultants remain uniquely positioned at the tip of the spear as the industry finds its way through the "new normal". At a time like this, passing the reins of a firm's entire US healthcare practice is not something any firm would do without careful consideration. Deloitte recently announced it was tapping 30-year firm veteran Tina Wheeler to take over as its US healthcare lead. She's succeeding Steve Burrill, who's retiring after 37 years with the company. We sat down with Wheeler to talk about her priorities, goals, and what she sees as some of the biggest opportunities in healthcare consulting in these unprecedented times.
Consulting: You obviously have some big shoes to fill succeeding Steve Burrill after such a long tenure. What will be your initial focus in your new role?
Wheeler: Steve's decision to retire was a little bit of a surprise, a lot of partners decided to retire early given the situation with covid, so I was asked to step in. I've been the global and US healthcare audit leader for the past 7 years, so I've been working as part of Steve's team to help shape the landscape and focus on our strategy in the marketplace. I was lucky that I had that opportunity to work with Steve, these are definitely big shoes to fill.
As you think about direction and goals and priorities, first and foremost, especially in this virtual world, I'm focused on really getting to know all of our people. We have about 8,000 professionals who consider healthcare their primary industry, about 350 of them are partners. I know many of them already given my other role, but developing followership and trust is so key to any leadership position. In the pre-covid world I'd be traveling across the country, meeting with them, going to dinners. That's the internal side of things. From an external perspective, I know many of our clients, and I'm fortunate that I've worked on a significant number of healthcare provider and payer accounts over the years. Obviously in my new role I have even more clients that I want to be able to meet and influence and help, and it makes it more difficult as we all know. I'm old school, I've been with Deloitte 30 years, and there's really nothing that takes the place of in person.
Consulting: What is the overall state of the healthcare consulting market at this stage in the pandemic?
Wheeler: A lot has changed, but I think there's a lot of opportunity. We have seen some projects that have been stalled and delayed, but I think it also depends on the sector. The providers in particular have been challenged with financials when all elective procedures were deferred for that 3-4 month period. They're trying to navigate virtual health, Telehealth, there's a lot of opportunity for us to help clients as they try to reboot revenue, as they bring people back in. If you had a crystal ball and knew if and when there will eventually be a vaccine, it will also be interesting how we can help them with their supply chain, even distribution. Helping clients with unique issues through this whole pandemic is pretty critical. I think covid has been a catalyst for virtual health, and it's even shown the roles around interoperability and sharing of data will become even more critical on top of the supply chain side of things.
On the health plan side, we've been doing a lot of work with payers around financial forecasting. They have some incredible financial results during 2020 because claims were down so much, but what does that look like post-pandemic? Will there be shifts in coverage? There's a lot of things payers are thinking about strategically.
Consulting: From a consulting perspective, is the current mission to help clients navigate what's going on with the pandemic? Helping them get back to "normal" – or a combination of the two?
Wheeler: I'd say it's a combination of the two. It might depend on the size of the organization, even the geography, some health systems were hit really hard if they were in a hotspot. Others in more rural areas maybe didn't have the same issues. Another area we're helping clients with imminently is a lot of healthcare providers received CARES Act stimulus money, and those rules have been changing. Even as recently as Sept. 19 HHS issued another clarifying announcement around how to calculate and support the monies you received, and it changed substantially. We've tried to be really proactive in communicating with our clients about changes in regulations here and now, but we're also helping them strategically look around the corner to see what's coming. If there is a second wave, how do they build that resiliency. If and when and hopefully soon a vaccine is available, how do they distribute it and what is their role in this healthcare ecosystem. Consulting: What are some of the big new challenges you're seeing a lot of different clients grappling with?
Wheeler: I think the biggest thing right now from a provider perspective is recovering from big financial losses. They've had significant drops in patient volume, they're trying to recover from this reduced utilization period, even clinical trials are put on hold because pharma companies are uncertain about drug development. You've seen enrollment shifts for health plans. I think there's a lot of issues there, and then really just kind of preparing for if and when there is a second wave, how do you deal with that from a resiliency perspective? Focusing on supply chain and figuring out what those next stops are. Strategy is so important. We had a CSO summit for strategy officers in healthcare on the theme of harnessing disruption. If you think about it I'm sure throughout the year you had to be nimble, you had to be flexible, and you had to change. I think that's going to be the theme for at least the next six months to a year.
Consulting: What will the companies that are able to get through this do differently than ones who aren't?
Wheeler: Whenever you have something like this there's winners and losers. I think health systems need to focus on making the right investments and also thinking through what do they want to be, or how do they want to play in this environment. I think technology and tech transformation becomes increasingly important. It's also important they focus on cyber risk, and either ERP or other technology which is going to be instrumental in tracking financial results, cases, and trying to ride the wave, because we don't know where it's going to take us.
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