In an era of increasing complexity in healthcare, consultants can help organizations address inefficiencies, improve patient experiences, and set overall strategy. The most successful consultants do so through a lens of authenticity, recognizing that earning their clients' trust is key to achieving their full potential in this critical role. The Healthcare Consultant's Handbook: Career Opportunities and Best Practices offers insight into the essential role of the healthcare consultant. Author Scott A. Mason draws on more than 40 years of experience to reveal the realities of management consulting for healthcare organizations and the traits and strengths necessary for success. He looks at the common challenges healthcare consultants face and how best to overcome them. The book explores the role of the independent consultant, offers practical guidance on what to expect when working for a consulting firm and reveals what it takes to be an exceptional consultant. Various types of consulting are identified, along with types of consulting firms--profiling several prominent companies--and strategies for determining what type of firm is the best fit. Mason also provides a detailed look at: - Myths surrounding healthcare consulting - The client-consultant relationship from all perspectives - Unique elements of the healthcare sector that consultants often focus on - Differences between healthcare consulting and general management consulting - Key lessons learned from challenging client engagements With this book, new and prospective healthcare consultants will gain a greater understanding of the craft and practical insight into what truly makes a consultant exceptional.

Hiring a consulting firm can be a daunting prospect. Do you really need consultants? If you do, how do you know you are getting the best value for your money? An Insider's Guide to Working with Healthcare Consultants: How to Achieve Exceptional Results answers those questions.With his dual perspective as a hospital CEO and a healthcare consultant, author Andrew C. Agwunobi is uniquely qualified to help hospital leaders become masters of the successful consulting engagement. He explains: When--and whether--to hire consultantsHow to choose the right consultantsHow to negotiate the right priceHow to lead an engagement to the desired conclusionHow to sustain improvements This insider's guide includes tips from 40 leading consultants to help clients establish and maintain mutually beneficial relationships. Real-world case studies illustrate common business problems and solutions, and a checklist at the end of each chapter emphasizes key considerations. Nearly every major project begins with a mission-critical decision: Hire outside professionals or depend on internal resources? Armed with this book's insights, healthcare leaders can make that decision with confidence and avoid costly mistakes.

Is your consulting practice ready to serve the needs of the new healthcare organizations? As Emerging Healthcare Organizations (EHOs) rapidly replace traditional ways of delivering healthcare, accountants and other consultants to healthcare providers will face greater demands—and potentially reap greater rewards—than ever before. In A Guide to Consulting Services for Emerging Healthcare Organizations, healthcare consulting expert Robert James Cimasi offers a comprehensive and authoritative guide to the full spectrum of these EHOs and the opportunities they offer consultants and their clients who need to understand them and their unique requirements.

This Handbook provides an authoritative overview of current issues and debates in the field of health care management. It contains over twenty chapters from well-known and eminent academic authors, who were carefully selected for their expertise and asked to provide a broad and critical overview of developments in their particular topic area. The development of an international perspective and body of knowledge is a key feature of the book. The Handbook secondly makes a case for bringing back a social science perspective into the study of the field of health care management. It therefore contains a number of contrasting and theoretically orientated chapters (e.g. on institutionalism; critical management studies). This social science based approach is a refreshing alternative to much existing work in this domain and offers a good way into current academic debates in this field. The Handbook thirdly explores a variety of important policy and organizational developments apparent within the current health care field (e.g. new organizational forms; growth of management consulting in health care organizations). It therefore explores and comments on major contemporary trends apparent in the practice field.

Management consultants of various kinds play an important role in the world of business, and within other types of organization. The Oxford Handbook on Management Consulting is a comprehensive overview of thinking and research on management consultancy with contributions from leading international scholars. The first section provides an account of the historical developments in management consulting research, and how current thinking has evolved from prior work. The second section focuses on disciplinary and theoretical perspectives, their diversities, areas of synergy, and parallel concerns. The following sections examine consulting as a knowledge business, consultants and management fashion, and the relationship between management consultants and their clients. The Handbook concludes with an assessment of areas of future research and debate. By bringing together a wide range of research and thinking on management consulting across different disciplines, sub-disciplines, and conceptual approaches, the Handbook provides a comprehensive understanding of both current thinking and future directions for research.

Each year, thousands of consulting contracts are awarded by organizations to experts who help them with challenges involving people, processes, technologies, goals, resource allocation, decision making, problem solving, and more. These experts - consultants - diagnose problems, recommend solutions, facilitate interventions, and evaluate outcomes that are often related to human communication. Some consultants are academicians skilled in both doing and interpreting research for clients; others are practitioners with little use for research and theory. Driving all of the ideas showcased in Consulting That Matters: A Handbook for Scholars and Practitioners is the premise that sound theory and research are critical to consulting success, and should be the blueprints for successful organizational transformation. Thus, this book is for all types of consultants, including the very best who are at the top of their games and those who believe theory and research belong in ivory towers, not business settings. Featuring a «who's who» of preeminent communication scholars/consultants, each author shares frameworks, strategies, and examples from their own diverse experiences, all grounded in rich, substantive theory and research. The volume offers even the most skilled and experienced consultants a range of alternative approaches, paradigms, and competencies to build their credibility and make them more valuable to their clients in a dynamic, ever-evolving business climate.