Faced with increased demand for contracts, that surged during the pandemic, the client needed an organization assessment of provider contracting services to understand how to meet the current and future contracting needs and implement recommendations to improve overall team performance. The responsibility for establishing and maintaining contracts was split across three entities health plan, hospital and medical groups. This required strong alignment and collaboration among leadership and the provider contracting department.

Saoirse Consulting conducted an organizational assessment within an eight-week timeframe. The assessment led to Saoirse Consulting understanding the department goals and growth trajectory, evaluating the processes, practices and personal of the provider contracting department and assessing the current staffing model and organizational structure to determine the staffing needs. Given work transitioned from an office to a virtual environment it required a review of current technology and systems to support these workflows and future technology initiatives. The strategic goals and strategies were also reviewed to understand the key drivers of the growth and opportunities. Saoirse Consulting also conducted multiple work sessions and interviews with key staff and leadership and both internal and external customers.

Saoirse Consulting was able to quickly synthesize a significant amount of quantitative and qualitative feedback on the organization and its leadership in a format that allowed leadership to address the most critical issues. Leadership endorsed Saoirse Consulting’s recommendations and engaged Saoirse Consulting to implement the solutions. This resulted in provider contracting department to be able to quickly identify, escalate and address customer issues more consistently and efficiently and improve the relationship with customers. Saoirse Consulting’s process improvement approach empowered provider contracting staff to be resourced to meet the near and long term needs of the department and fostered overall performance improvement by establishing best practices. Saoirse Consulting transformed how to serves customers in a virtual setting and provided tools to educate a geographically dispersed customers on how to engage provider contracting and enable customers to have greater visibility into the status of contracts.

The assessment roadmap also included an infrastructure plan to ensure the provider contracting function would continue to be supported on an ongoing basis in both an office and virtual setting.

• Redefined job descriptions and departmental responsibilities.
• Staffing with the ability to function autonomously and support future IT endeavors.
• Improved cross department coordination by realigning staff and providing tools to optimize speed and flexibility and eliminate silos.
• Improved vendor relations with increased communication and collaboration standards for future projects.
• Sustainable, scalable departmental operations.