Clinical Laboratory Strategic Consulting

Lab Strategic Consulting is a consulting service that specifically identifies and quantifies various strategic options available to a hospital, health system, or independent laboratory. A team of consultants enable executives in evaluating long-term decisions that impact the bottom line. The most valuable thing strategic consultants do is provide due diligence for lab strategies. They can help leaders match expertise with opportunity to enhance the quality, efficiency, and profitability of the lab.

Learn More About Accumen’s Area of Focus →

A good clinical laboratory advisory service will be comprised of many experts in business, finance, data, compliance, quality, technology, safety, supply chain, and efficiency aspects of lab operations. This allows the team to provide a detailed review that considers multiple perspectives. By drawing on this expertise, lab consultants provide valuable feedback and insight that helps labs move closer to achieving their strategic goals. Then, after strategic decisions have been made, operational consultants work hand in hand.

The fees charged by a clinical laboratory consultancy will vary from project to project. Because every client has unique needs, the scope and nature of a consulting engagement will require varying degrees of customization. A good clinical laboratory consultancy will tailor its services to meet the unique needs of its clients. Just as a professional sports team devises different game plans when facing various opponents, consultants should take a customized and flexible approach to address the specific challenges presented by each client. Every Consulting engagement with Accumen starts with a customized Statement of Work. We meet with prospective clients and determine what strategic business question they are looking to answer. We then develop a list of Key Activities that would need to be completed in order to identify strategic options and develop forward-looking financial statements to assess and compare the viable strategic options. These Key Activities define the scope of the project as well as the level of effort required to answer the strategic question.

Clinical laboratory consultants offer labs their knowledge and experience. Some labs may already have the expertise needed to fully optimize their approach to quality, service, productivity, cost, and compliance. However, many labs may struggle with some, or even all, of these areas. That is where clinical laboratory consultants come in. Our laboratorians have broad experience with many organizations, so they can take lessons learned and apply them to new client challenges. They also employ the latest management techniques and key performance metrics to deliver unbiased quantitative and qualitative recommendations.

Hire a strategic consultant when your organization is faced with a major strategic decision. This is especially true whenever a large strategic investment is being considered. If a health system is preparing to spend tens or even hundreds of millions of dollars in the hopes of increasing future profits, it’s a good idea to subject that decision to the most rigorous due diligence possible. A healthcare advisory service can evaluate the investment and point out any potential flaws in its business case. That way, healthcare executives can be sure that they are making the best use of their organization’s resources and time.

The most common Strategic Decisions Accumen has been asked to advise on include: Consolidation of laboratory services, building an offsite Central laboratory for a hospital system, addition or removal of laboratory services (Molecular, Genetics, Toxicology), Strategic Space Planning when building or updating facilities, evaluation of merger and acquisition opportunities, buying or selling Outreach programs, and evaluation of Joint Venture opportunities.

Authentic feedback. Especially when the consultant is being asked to address issues of strategic importance, they should be expected to take the lab’s perspective and identify the actions that will truly move the organization closer to reaching its strategic goals. In some cases, that will mean that the consultant points out systemic issues that require changes. Of course, in order to identify and ameliorate these issues, the consultant needs to have expertise in both lab operations and strategy. They also need to be able to work as a team with each other, and with leaders and staff, to evaluate the business from many different angles.

From a purely financial perspective, clinical lab ROI is a matter of revenues and costs. However, it’s worth noting the crucial role that trust plays in matters of provider and patient satisfaction, as well as community reputation. When evaluating strategic option, it is important to understand the cost of doing nothing. If operations continue as they currently are, there is a financial impact to that decision. At Accumen, we evaluate the Net Present Value of each identified strategic option alongside the “Status Quo” model in order to understand the differential between all possible strategic options. This enables healthcare executives to appropriately balance the financial impact of their decisions with the needs of their patients.

Hospital laboratories are an $8 billion business in the United States. That’s big business. However, not every hospital lab is profitable. In fact, due to increasing regulatory burdens and competitive pressures, many hospital labs are being closed as health systems consolidate. For some health systems, it makes sense to capitalize on economies of scale with one high-throughput lab. This means that labs that want to remain open have to be as profitable as possible.
It’s worth noting that diagnostic testing is recession proof. It doesn’t matter what’s happening in the broader economy; people still need lab tests. As a result, the way for most labs to increase profits is to control their costs and accurately explore new revenue streams.

Laboratory services are also critical to patient care. So understanding the strategic and financial implications of laboratory decisions can help organizations ensure that their patients are able to receive the best possible care with the best possible outcomes.

One way to increase ROI is to optimize the physical layout of the lab. Oftentimes, labs are poorly organized, and technicians have a hard time moving about the lab safely. There should always be at least four feet of walkway to let people move past one another quickly. That being said, it would be best for people to move as little as possible. Wasted motion not only reduces the productivity of the lab but also demoralizes technicians. People want to be productive at work, and nothing will sap their energy like wasted time. As a result, it’s recommended to group similar types of equipment together so that technicians won’t have to move very far in order to access the tools they need to perform tests.

From a purely financial perspective, hospital lab ROI is just a matter of revenues and costs. However, it’s worth noting the crucial role that trust plays in driving lab ROI. Patients and health systems trust hospital labs to deliver reliable and timely diagnostic services. That trust is the foundation of clinical lab operations. As a result, no attempt to improve ROI can endanger the trust that people have placed in a clinical lab. That being said, there are many tactical and strategic improvements that a lab can make to reduce costs and increase output. These range from optimizing layout to getting assistants to complete higher-value tasks during their shifts.