Health Care Consultants are not people who possess special powers to magically make things better or right. They are people just like you or me, but they can bring special skills and abilities such as knowledge, experience, other perspectives and manpower to a situation that may not be readily available within our internal pool of resources. Success in working with a consultant requires planning just as with anything else we do.

1. Success in working with a consultant means to you need to look at it as a partnership.

Unless you are hiring your consultant to perform a specific technical task, that individual or group is going to need to get to know your organization if they are to provide you with anything meaningful. This will normally entail a considerable amount of share in the form of ideas, thoughts, and information along with brainstorming. It must be looked at as a partnership with the common goal of success.

2. Go into the partnership knowing what you want.

This does not means having decided in advance on all the detailed goals as this is something that you and the health care consultant should develop together as part of your initial planning and negotiation phase. But it does mean that you should go into those discussions have an idea of what you want to accomplish. This will reduce the likelihood that you will find yourself somewhere that gets you nowhere.

3. Have a comfort level that the consultant’s way of getting things done is a good fit for your organization.

Every person has their own style for getting things done. Some consultants can easily adjust their approach to meet the needs of the situation and some can not. If your consultant’s style is not a good fit for our organization, staff, board and medical staff, then success is already in danger. It is also important that the consultant is a good fit for what you want to accomplish.