Engaging and working with pharmacy consultants

Extract

Hearing the boss utter the phrase “We are engaging consultants” has made many a pharmacy enterprise leader shudder. They reflexively tremble because productivity consultants have historically been engaged by personnel at the executive level. This was evidenced by data from a 2012 survey of pharmacy leaders at University HealthSystem Consortium (UHC) member organizations revealing that hospital senior executive teams initiated all reported pharmacy operations consulting engagements over the previous five years—and did so without pharmacy leaders’ input into the consultant selection process.¹

Appropriately engaging consultants can have a positive impact on our health systems and the profession of pharmacy. It is incumbent on pharmacy leaders to recognize the value that consultants can provide and to recognize when it is important to proactively self-initiate a consulting engagement.

This article focuses on how pharmacy leaders can best position their operations prior to a consulting engagement and how to derive maximum value from the use of a consultant. (Hereafter, “consultant” may refer to an individual consultant or to a consulting firm or its agents.)