Overview
L.E.K. collaborates with private and public hospitals and health systems in the U.S., Latin America, Europe, Asia and Australia to help them thrive in the rapidly evolving healthcare value chain. We assist clients with development and implementation of unique solutions that are responsive to market trends such as shifting demographics, recognizing the patient as consumer, reimbursement and budget pressure, integration and consolidation, and changing and unpredictable regulatory environments.
Key questions and challenges
Hospitals and health systems look to us to help address key strategic issues such as:
- What is an effective strategy for our organization to grow, both organically and via M&A?
- How should we re-engineer our service offerings and business models to be most successful?
- How can we successfully evolve our capabilities, care models, cost structure and value proposition to win under bundled payment structures and other value-based and risk-based reimbursement mechanisms?
- How can we best navigate the rapidly changing payer/funder environment? Should we enhance our payer engagement strategies, develop payer capabilities in-house, participate in exchanges or take some other approach?
- How can we enhance our customer value proposition and our sales and marketing efforts?
- How will emerging technologies (e.g., electronic health records, big data analytics, telehealth, digital health) impact our operations? How can we be proactive in the era of digital healthcare?
- Are there opportunities for us to monetize our innovations in the marketplace?
- Which international markets represent attractive growth prospects, where we can leverage our expertise to creative value?
- What procedures are most suitable for self-pay patients, and how can we maximize the flow of these patients?
Examples of our work
To learn more about how we help clients create value, please refer to these case examples:
- Developed a strategic growth plan, articulated organizational implications, and developed and supported implementation of go-to-market plans for each strategic initiative for a hospital that was experiencing declining financial performance in light of material changes to its operating environment. Our work put the hospital on a path to near-term breakeven performance, with a five-year path to significant and sustainable profitability.
- Assessed the competitive landscape, including strategic direction, organizational structure, growth plans, center versus satellite footprint strategies and cost structure, to support a leading academic medical center’s effort to develop a strategy for achieving sustainable growth. The client extensively leveraged our work to pursue and capture internal efficiencies and to drive a strategy for expansion that grew the mission and footprint while ensuring the long-term success of the premier central campus.
- Led a multiregional, multifunctional cost optimization project management office effort to catalog existing improvement initiatives, identify incremental improvement opportunities, and validate and prioritize initiatives for a leading integrated health system. Successful implementation yielded approximately $2 billion of run-rate operating profit improvement.
- Developed a pain management strategy and program to combat the opioid epidemic for a nationally renowned integrated health system. The strategy directly addressed how to change clinician behavior within the construct of fee-for-service, pay-for-volume, high-cost interventions and misaligned payer incentives. The client achieved broad alignment across stakeholders — administration, clinical leadership, affiliated physician groups, captive health plan — and continues to implement our recommendations.
- Collaborated with senior management of a world-renowned academic medical center to evaluate several strategic options, which ultimately led to greenlighting the launch of a Medicare Advantage plan. We subsequently provided long-term implementation support, including regulatory application and bid support, organizational and operational design and build, operational readiness assessment, and go-live support. The MA plan launched successfully and, by year two, had exceeded enrollment targets by over 50%.
- Assessed the market opportunity for a top regional health system seeking to monetize internal innovations in the area of personalized medicine. L.E.K. segmented potential customer end markets, evaluated reimbursement and payment models (including consumer direct pay), and designed a sophisticated partnership strategy to close internal capability gaps and accelerate the path to market. Our recommendations led the client to establish a multiyear plan to launch and grow the business.
- Collaborated with a leading European hospital provider to develop an integrated care strategy, leveraging its strengths in oncology and cardiology. The strategy included developing care pathways, with operating metrics benchmarked to international best practices, and incorporating activity across different settings in primary and secondary care. The client deployed clinically led care pathways and expanded into the primary care setting.
- Supported a leading private hospital operator in assessing the drivers of private hospital demand, understanding reimbursement and regulatory trends, and validating competitive positioning and drivers of differentiation across its portfolio. Our effort supported engagement with potential new investors, resulting in the acquisition of the company by an offshore player as a platform for driving domestic and international growth.
- Developed a comprehensive view of how a European private hospital market expected to evolve, including a site-level review of local market size and growth dynamics and a projection of greater out-of-pocket payments and use of the system by the public funder for provision of additional specialist capacity. Our work facilitated a successful transaction for shareholders.
- Developed the overall and oncology strategies for a leading private hospital in Turkey, which underpinned the development of the first fully integrated cancer treatment facility in the region and the identification of the most attractive locations for outreach clinics.
