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Management & Technology Consulting
Interim Management Services
Serving major US and international markets
aVM Health is a trademark jointly owned by
Arete Advisors LLC and Versatile Med Analytics
Is your organization poised to win in the digital age or will its existence ceased to be relevant in the market place?
Is your organization stuck with old modes of thinking and working that brought success in the past?
Think it cannot happen to your company? Think again.
Iconic household names across industries, from Compaq, Blockbuster to TWA have all vanished. As have powerful and once successful financial institutions. Mortgage lender Countrywide Financial, numerous Wall Street banks including Lehman Brothers, Savings and loan company Washington Mutual and NY insurer Financial Guaranty.
Powerful forces are disrupting the insurance, banking and mortgage industries. Customer expectations, next-gen technology advancements, increased global and local regulatory requirements from Europe's GDPR to local cybersecurity laws are affecting large and mid market enterprises alike. Demographic changes and increased mergers and acquisitions add additional external pressures.
To survive, let alone stay ahead of the curve, organizations must address these challenges head on and retool. Organizations must not only think and do things differently to survive, but must also dramatically transform themselves.
Challenged to stay on top of healthcare reforms and constantly increasing pressures to deliver superior patient satisfaction, improve quality outcomes, increase efficiencies while also dramatically reduce operating cost base and total cost of IT ownership?
Contact us today to learn how our seasoned talent help over seventy-five (75) state-wide healthcare agencies, pharmaceutical giants, community and multi-hospital network, healthcare insurers / carriers, and providers achieve astonishing gains (50% + ) in patient satisfaction, efficiencies, quality and slash 15-20% of operating cost base, up to 50% in some areas, and dramatically improve revenues and reimbursement earnings.
Our talent have helped large numbers of hospitals and healthcare providers across the country, from the Lone Star State of Texas to the Empire State of New York and many in between. From the Midwest to the Southwestern region, we are making a positive impact on one patient, physician, hospital, and medical service center at a time.
Band with us on this mission to improve the healthcare system and deliver the highest value and quality care at the lowest cost.
Create a culture of evidence-based care. Harvard Business Review studies reveal companies that utilize operating data and advanced analytics in day-to-day and strategic decision making can significantly improve business performance, overall quality and delivery of care.
Learn how we can help you cultivate this culture.
Resist the old way of sourcing for Tier 1 consulting services. Get with the innovative way of receiving superior management consulting services.
You have heard of Bain and Deloitte Consulting. But have you heard of Eden McCallum (London) elite consultants? We are the Eden McCallum for Healthcare, Management and Technology Consulting in the USA.
Founded by former Accenture, Deloitte and Tier 1 Consulting and Fortune 500 Industry Leaders, we do things differently. Innovative in approach, we pass on significant savings to you.
Superior management consulting services without traditional premium prices.
We offer:
Top Seasoned Talent.
Superior Results.
Delivery without Bureaucracy.
Affordable price points.
Say "yes." to
Unmatched Value.
Dissatisfied patients
Dissatisfied patients
Poor physicians' documentation
Overworked physicians and staff
Delays in getting testing results to physicians promptly
Inaccurate diagnosis because of poor data
Wrong prescriptions. Adverse effects.
What's Our Story?
This is not just a business for us. Our founding principals formed the healthcare consulting services in response to their desire to contribute to making a significant positive difference in assisting providers, insurers and payers improve the healthcare system.
Our experiences inform us that many patients, our family and friends included, are frustrated by increasingly high cost of care and the difficulty navigating the healthcare network to receive accurate and appropriate (not too much, not too little) care.
Patients are hurting.
Many, from your 85-year old grandmother living alone to a single mother struggling to feed her young ones find themselves saddled with unexpected out of pocket expenses. Chronically ill patients are delaying getting treatment even if they have insurance because they do not want to incur high co-pays and deductibles.
Physicians too, have their struggles.
Many are burdened by administrative tasks caused by reforms and are exasperated by inefficiencies that prevent them from delivering superb care. Consider this. A hospital surgery room was only available two-thirds of the time, costing the organization more than $1.3 million in lost revenue a month. More importantly, surgeries are cancelled at the 11th hour because surgical instruments are not cleaned and ready for the operating room.
Providers too have their challenges.
Many are overwhelmed by numerous challenges, from reduced reimbursement earnings, increased penalties to increased regulatory complexity, costly administrative burden and increased demand for quality and satisfaction.
We can go on about the troubles the healthcare system face but you get the notion. Having successfully delivered dramatic operational efficiencies and improving customer service and slashing operating cost in the service industry, our founders realized we can bring these highly transferable techniques and solutions to the healthcare industry and bend the cost of care and make a positive difference on safety, quality and patient satisfaction. There's just one problem. If we charge high rates for our premium talent as the large and brand name boutiques do, then we are not truly assisting the system. We are just milking an already ailing industry.
This led to our creation of a lean, innovative model and approach. This imaginative model seeks to offer healthcare organizations Tier-1 management consulting talent without the premium cost.
Take advantage of our lean model and let us drive change together - to bring superior patient experience and high quality of care to the table, while simultaneously improving your organizational's financial health so that you can invest in people, modern technology and infrastructure to continue to compete and stay ahead of the curve.
Let us help you solve these health system wars and more:
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Reduce wait times in ED
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Improve patient satisfaction
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Simplify and improve physicians' administrative burden and documentation
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Improve workload and capacity management, reduce unnecessary overtime
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Streamline and turnaround test results quicker, get the needed information to physicians on time for accurate diagnosis and improved treatment efficacy
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Remove duplicated testing
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Improve physicians' clinical decision making and diagnosis accuracy
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Reduce adverse effects, improve prescription accuracy
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Reduce in-patient mortality index
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Reduce in-patient infection rates
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Reduce re-admissions
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Improve outreach and care coordination for high-risk patients
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Improve cost of care per physician
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Reduce variance among physicians' provided quality of care for the same illness, and where individual patient's preferences are not required
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Improve bedside manners
Long wait times
Our multi-disciplinary team of clinical, hospital, technology and management consulting advisors bring to the table unparalleled combination of passion and expertise at affordable price points - to help you overcome cost burdens, respond to increased demand for superior quality of patient care, respond to efficiency challenges, and meet complex regulatory requirements.
From hospitals to pharmaceuticals, pharmacies to state-wide medical agencies, we bring efficiencies and quality to many corners of this broad and critical ecosystem. We are dedicated to helping you succeed in achieving your most ambitious tangible goals.
Our people combine specialties in improving patient safety, quality of care and efficiency while bending the cost and revenue curve. Moreover, we love numbers and are relentless in our pursuit to deliver tangible outcomes. Our track record speaks for itself.
Meet some of our people here and learn about some of their notable works.
B. Green
Mr. Green is one of our most respected and sought-after certified Master Black Belt senior advisors. He has over 20 years of experience in leading the identification of strategic and high-value impact opportunities to deliver substantial top and bottom-line growth. He has coached 1,000's of leaders, Sponsors, Business Leaders, Process Owners, Master Black Belts, Black Belts, Green Belts, Kaizen Leaders and staff in the principles of Lean and Lean Six Sigma and in execution of Lean, Six Sigma, Kaizen Events and process improvement projects. Mr. Green has delivered $100,000,000's in cost savings and increased revenue. Among many notable achievements, Mr. Green helped pharmaceutical giants reduce ~ 30% waste and deliver $2,000,000.00 in cost savings in mere months. He has international and global experience across industries. Mr. Green has a Masters of Science in Manufacturing Management and count Pfizer, MetLife, Guardian (Group Medical) and Alpharma among his many major clients. He has also worked for George Group and Accenture. Mr. Green received his MBB qualifications from one of the pioneering Six Sigma consulting companies.
L. Snodgrass
Ms. Snodgrass is a senior principal advisor with expertise in Business Process Reengineering, Operational Excellence, Lean Six Sigma deployment, Transformational Change, Large-Scale Program Management, Risk Management and Governance. She has more than 15 years of industry executive leadership and management consulting experience. Formerly, Ms. Snodgrass oversaw the formation of Operational Excellence, Internal Controls, program management capabilities, strategic and enterprise change initiatives for a major group medical insurer. She co-authored the Model Audit Rule (SOX for Insurers) that was adopted by the New York State Department of Insurance. Ms. Snodgrass has advised numerous blue-chip companies and steered initiatives with impact on 100,000 + associates. Her notable works include reducing expense by 1.5-3% of cost base ($20,000,000.00 - $30,000,000.00) within three months, reducing defects by 90%, reducing cycle times by more than 50%, and improving satisfaction by up to 1,000 basis points within a year. Formerly, Ms. Snodgrass worked for and was a faculty member at Accenture Professional Education Center. She has trained more than 1,000 consultants and client staff in change management, process re/engineering, Lean, controls and program management. Ms. Snodgrass's rare gift is her ability to be both strategic and big-picture focused while delivering remarkable results because of her attention for detail, deep analytical abilities and ability to anticipate issues and risks around the corner. Ms. Snodgrass has a Bachelors Degree in Corporate Finance (Honors) and is an MBA candidate in Healthcare at Ohio University.
J. Marcone (CNMT, RNT)
Mr. Marcone is a certified Master Black Belt from Dow Biopharmaceutical, an early and astonishingly successful adopter of Six Sigma and Lean principles. He has more than 20 years of healthcare, pharmacy and hospital experience with expertise in HEDIS measures, Lean, Kaizen, Rapid Improvement Cycles, Statiscal Analysis, and Six Sigma. Mr. Marcone has advised and implemented numerous clinical and non-clinical quality improvement projects. Among his notable achievements include improving patient satisfaction scores by more than 50%, reducing ALOS by 30% and re-admissions by 15%. He also led a clinical improvement project that was the recipient of the 2014 Pinnacle Award for Quality and Patient Safety, and was a recipient of the Squibb Excellence and Exceptional Quality Award. Formerly, Mr. Marcone was a Chief Nuclear Medicine Technologist and Pharmacist, and held various Quality and Performance Improvement management and leadership positions with Syosset Hospital, Tyco Healthcare and Dow Pharmaceutical. Mr. Marcone received his Masters of Science from St. Johns University. He is a qualified practitioner with certifications in many quality improvement principles including Design for Six Sigma and Healthcare Effectiveness, Data and Information Set (HEDIS) Quality Standards.
M. Brown
Ms. Brown is a certified Master Black Belt and Lean Master from George Group (acquired by Accenture in 2007). She has more than 20 years of Lean, Kaizen, and Lean Six Sigma process design and process improvements. Ms. Brown has delivered in excess of $50,000,000.00 validated and quantified cost savings and revenues assisting numerous organizations in the healthcare and financial sector optimize operations, processes and workflows. Ms. Brown is a dynamic and results-centric operational excellence executive with remarkable accomplishments in this field. She has trained and certified more than 300 to 400 Kaizen Leaders, Black and Green Belts and coached hundreds more of champions and business leaders. Ms. Brown has led and executed more than 400 Kaizen and Lean Events. She has reduced patient wait time by 54% and improved hospital registration processes to deliver 90% improvements to throughput and 60% improvements to patient satisfaction (Net Promoter Scores). Ms. Brown has a Bachelor's degree in Criminology from the Florida State University, and is a Balanced Scorecard Certified Developer, Facilitator and Coach, assisting many leaders to define effective scorecards linked to business strategies. Ms. Brown's specialty in healthcare includes revenue cycle, hospitals, patient satisfaction (wait times), point of service care and administration including registration and pre-registrations and reimbursements.
S. Wien
Mr. Wien is one of our associate principal advisors with expertise in Change Management, Human Capital Management, Organization Design and Development and Process and Technology Implementation. He has more than 20 years of experience advising numerous large companies and public agencies. Formerly, Mr. Wien held various management positions with Deloitte Consulting, Cap Gemini Consulting, and Gartner. Mr. Wien is also an adjunct professor teaching graduate classes in Organization Design and Leadership Change with numerous colleges and universities in the state of Connecticut. Mr. Wien has many notable accomplishments including leading and optimizing workforce productivity and operational efficiencies for a state's healthcare insurer and provider. Mr. Wien received his Masters of Science degree from City University of New York.
R. Groves
Mr. Groves is a certified Master Black Belt and Lean Master from George Group, Accenture and Six Sigma Qualtec. He has more than 20 years of Lean, Kaizen, Lean Six Sigma and process transformation experience. His specialties include emergency room and departments, oncology, surgical services and multi-hospital network delivery. Mr. Groves has delivered $100's of millions in cost savings, increased reimbursement earnings and improved cash-flows and revenue cycles. Mr. Groves has a remarkable talent and a rare gift for his ability to combine statistical analysis with his Lean and process improvement expertise to make a positive impact in as little as mere weeks. In one example, he reduced medical diagnosis defect rates by 75% and increased remibursement earnings by $20,000,000.00 annually in less than 30-days of project work. Mr. Groves has helped multi-network hospitals including the Veteran Administration network of more than 50 hospitals across the country build a Lean process improvement capability while certifying and training 100s of physicians, Kaizen and business leaders, clinicians and administrators. Mr. Groves has also improved patient satisfaction scores by by more than 75%. Mr. Groves has a Masters degree in Physics from West Virginia University.
N. Argy, MD, JD
Dr. Argy is a Physician and Clinical Special Senior Advisor and a strategic medical partner of Arete Advisors, advising clients in the Healthcare sector. His specialties include radiology, clinical, medical, operations, healthcare policy, patient safety, compliance, medical risk management and bioethics. He has consulted and served numerous healthcare organizations and academia in the fields of patient safety, clinical optimization, medical ethics, and compliance, health policy, bioethics, risk management and radiology. He is a highly respected and sought after medical advisor. In addition to advising Arete's clients, Dr. Argy has his own successful medical consulting practice and serves on numerous medical and patient safety boards including Boston College, Lahey Hospital, Betsy Lehman Center, Massacusetts Medical Society Committee for Quality of Medical Practice.
To learn more about Dr. Argy, visit www.nicolasargy.com
M. Snodgrass
Mr. Snodgrass is a senior technology principal advisor. He has more than 20 years of experience in building and modernizing IT capabilities, IT Next-Generation Infrastructure, Cloud and Cybersecurity Solutions. His expertise includes High Performance Computing, grid computing, virtualization, storage, networks, servers, data-centers, security and systems engineering. Mr. Snodgrass combines an unusual talent for deep technical expertise with business and financial acumen. Mr. Snodgrass is a highly sought after technical and technology product roadmap advisory board member and has sat on Google, IBM, HP, and Linux advisory and technology council boards. Formerly, Mr. Snodgrass held executive and management roles at Tier 1 consulting firms, Accenture, EDS and blue chips, Merrill Lynch and Macquarie Bank. He was also Chief Architect Officer for ADP. Mr. Snodgrass's technical and business leadership dramatically improved a company's high-compute processing capability by 1,000%, catapulting the company's leadership ranking in its industry from top 20 to top 5, with $2B increased in profits. He has negotiated 100's of millions of dollars in vendor agreements that delivered more than $50 million in annualized savings. Mr. Snodgrass has improved productivity up to 60% and reduced annual run rate cost by 15-20%, including for the nation's largest business service provider that helps companies to better manage complex healthcare and ACA reform requirements. Mr. Snodgrass has numerous technical certifications including AWS (Amazon Web Services) and holds two masters degree in Computer Science and Technology Management from University of Liverpool and University of Maryland.
D. Lalwani
Mr. Lalwani is a senior advisor with expertise in organization change management, process analysis, stakeholder management, communications and project management. Mr. Lalwani has more than 15 years of experience helping numerous companies including pharmaceutical companies adopt large-scale change, implement process reengineering programs, outsourcing solutions and shared service functions. He has a Masters of Science in Organizational Psychology from Columbia University and is an adjunct professor at New York University in Organizational Behavior Management. Formerly, Mr. Dalwani worked for Accenture and Wipro Consulting. His clients include Pfizer, Baxter, Novartis and Teva. His notable accomplishments include reducing operating expense by $4,000,000 to $7,000,000 for an ambitious program.
G. Levine
Mr. Levine is a senior technology principal advisor with specialties in IT transformational change, infrastructure services, next-generation technologies, cloud computing, and application development. He has more than 30 years of experience transforming organizations, driving innovation, creating business value, leading strategy and shared services on a global scale, and building agile and performance driven organizations. Mr. Levine has modernized IT capabilities and spearheaded the transformation of an 1,800-FTE organization to a Plan/Build/Run service model based on the ITIL framework, which drove step rate improvements in productivity and quality. His next-gen IT strategy for the largest B2B SaaS provider in the world resulted in major contributions to margin growth, system availability, and a full Cloud Computing environment. Mr. Levine's notable works include slashing annual operating cost base by 50% ($100,000,000.00 + in savings), achieving annual run rate savings by $70 million, and dramatically improving productivity and efficiency levels which reduced payroll expense by more than 30%. Formerly, Mr. Levine held regional CIO and senior executive leadership roles with ADP, Merrill Lynch, and Morgan Stanley. He is a managing director of Arete-Hararei Joint Venture (AHJV) and a co-founder of Hararei, Inc.
Types of Work We Do in Healthcare
We identify and solve root-causes that prevent high levels of clinical performance and unlock barriers to optimizing operational efficiencies (in-patient and ambulatory, ED and trauma), utilization management, care management, care coordination, human resource productivity, IT systems' capacity, and medical equipment utilization.
Improve Service Lines
Transform your hospital's service line (e.g. ED) to
reduce re-admissions and ALOS, increase throughput and improve cash flow through effective point-of-care patient collections of co-pay.
Transform Delivery Networks
Substantially improve your CMS and patient safety scores while simultaneously deliver significant cost savings.
Optimize Clinical Workflows
Optimize your hospital's discharge workflow and streamline the process by 20 to 50% without compromising quality of care.
Create Real-Time Insights using Advanced Analytics
Provide Physicians with near real-time and point of care actionable and decision-making insights to improve treatment efficacy, reduce adverse effects and improve patient care outcomes.
Reduce
Operating
Cost Base
Eliminate redundant and consolidate duplicated services and functions and deliver 15-20% efficiencies to your operating cost base.
Improve Patient Safety & Satisfaction
Identify root-causes of patient dissatisfaction and dramatically improve patient experience and satisfaction by 20 to 90% or more.
Reduce Fraud & Abuse
Identify and remediate control deficiencies to prevent patients' harm, fraudulent claims, employee theft of inventory (prescription drug) and valuable intellectual property and patient data.
Improve
Revenue Cycle
Dramatically improve reimbursement earnings and bonuses, improve cash flow positions, and identify and eliminate hidden pockets of revenue leakage.
Next-Generation
IT Capabilities
Substantially improve Physicians' and radiologists' access to patients' test results at point of care. Improve the speed of transferring large data and imaging files between providers by 7 to 10X. Connect remote patients to physicians quickly to receive timely care.
Improve Population Health Management
Identify high-risk patients to provide better care coordination and deliver effective outreach programs to reduce cost of care and improve quality of care and patient outcomes.
Identify High-Value Impact Opportunities
Identify strategic and tactical opportunities that will deliver high-impact value on bottom and top line growth, as well as enable your strategic goals and 3-5 year business plan.
Consolidate Duplicative and Non-Core Services
Consolidate, outsource and eliminate redundant and low-value non-core support functions such as billing, coding, food services, supply chain, finance, HR, audit, compliance, call center and IT support.
Turn BIG Data into powerful Insights
for Daily Decision-Making IN HEALTHCARE.
THE NEW HABIT.
We help you create intelligence to enable accurate and informed strategic decisions.
Use Case Examples
IT Operations Analytics
Our financial and data analytic experts
help solve the following examples of decision-making issues that rely on correlating massive amounts of data from disparate sources:
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Determine the true cost of idle system capacity
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Calculate the true cost of data protection
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Determine the most cost-effective approach for data protection
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Detect application slow down due to storage contention
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Detect hotspots in shared infrastructure
What has IT Operations Analytics (ITOA) has to do with Healthcare Delivery, Patient Safety, and Quality?
Everything! Unless your goal is to be 100% dependent on expensive IT outsource companies, offshoring your entire IT capabilities to India or somewhere like it where talent and real-estate is cheaper, having a cost-efficient IT capability is paramount to enabling accurate data sharing among healthcare stakeholders, speed of transferring large amounts of data (e.g. radiology images and test results), and agility to respond to fast changing business, regulatory and patient demands, and being able to scale quickly and efficiently without increasing total cost of ownership.
Contact us today to find out more or sign up for our white paper.
Healthcare Analytics
Our healthcare data scientist and analytic experts help solve the following examples of decision-making issues that rely on extracting and aggregating structured and unstructured data from a variety of
sources :
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Identify patients with a high risk of hospital re-admissions
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Correlate data between payers and insurers to forecast and predict medical costs
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Identify opportunities and drivers for reducing costs to support and achieve Accountable Care Organization (ACO) objectives
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Design system interoperability to share data between stakeholders and improve data accuracy and promote single source of truth
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Identify bottlenecks in Accounts Receivables and improve cashflow and revenue management cycle
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Reduce claims denials
Analytics Capability In Healthcare
We assist companies in every stage of their advanced analytics maturity curve to help decision-makers, executives (Chief Revenue Officers, CFOs, CTOs, Medical Officers, Quality Directors), physicians and administrators leverage big data to make accurate and informed decisions based on real and near real-time actionable insights at either at the point of care, during strategic or daily operational decision making processes.
From technical experts to strategic thinkers, developers to statisticians, physician or medical advisory, our talent will help you identify the exact skills needed to accomplish your advanced analytics goal for your healthcare organization, and assist you to develop or improve your advanced analytics capability.
We assist you to define where you want to go, what are your goals in 3 to 5 years, assess what is your current state, and establish the gaps and develop a plan to address those gaps and move up the maturity curve.
We assist you to define measurable goals, and develop a performance measurement program to monitor your progress to identify corrective actions quickly.
We help you wrangle, correlate, calibrate data from multiple legacy and social media sources, and perform diagnostic or predictive modeling.
We help you with change management, training and communication activities to build adoption and develop proper use of your analytics' capabilities and tools. We make your analytics program "stick" so you realize the full benefits of your analytics program investment.
We help you build analytics dashboards and get near real-time actionable insights that you can consume on various types of end-user devices (laptops, androids, desktops, etc.) while on the run.
We help you develop a data governance program with standards defined, policies and procedures to support standardization.
Need help with Tools?
Our team is versed in
Microsoft Power BI, Qlik, Tableau, SAS, Python, R, and many more.
Ask us for a demo.
Overwhelmed by the number of analytics tools and platform choices in the marketplace? We will help you select an enterprise or cloud analytics tool suitable for your business needs.
We owe it to our society to find out how to increase patient safety by up to 90%, improve patient satisfaction by up to 50%, reduce and eliminate medical errors substantially, and transform clinical quality of care delivery TODAY.
Learn how to reduce cost of care and free up cash from hidden pockets by as much as 50% in a sustainable manner.
TESTIMONIALS
“Outstanding Client Service."
D.F., VP, Major Insurer
“This was a difficult environment with one hundred and fifty-five distributed locations. The team augmented our consulting team. The engagement team assigned demonstrated an extremely high level of commitment to client service. The solution delivered was creative and innovative."
M.H., Partner, Fortune 500 Professional Services Company
“A pleasure to work with. Deep expertise, very knowledgeable. Superb service."
F.A, Director and Program Manager
"Great (Lean) instructors, they really know the subject well. Great at relating topics to real life situations."
"Brian offers the willingness and ability to teach to a broad range of skills and backgrounds - not an easy task. He does so with well-balanced humor."
"As a clinician, I was comfortable with statistics, but was awed with the possibilities of process improvement that Lean Six Sigma promised for our healthcare system. Joe allowed our group and several others to improve efficiencies across the network."
Director, Cardiac Imaging.
“Excellent change agent."
First VP, Fortune 500
“Extremely collaborative. Gets the job done."
First VP, Fortune 500
“Drives to deliver on-time, on-budget."
SVP
“Excellent Project Manager."
EVP