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Leading Healthcare Payer Prepares Workforce for Increased Membership Under Obamacare

Situation

The state’s new Exchange model is expected to result in new membership and create significant demands on this company’s health management workforce.  The existing workforce is already strained to meet current customer demand and has less than 4 months to build a productive workforce to meet the increase in demand for customer support.  Legally mandated SLAs (response times) increase the criticality of this effort.

Challenge

The candidate market for this talent is extremely competitive, putting pressure on the organization to consider alternative means to addressing the resource gap. The organization was faced with many competing priorities and going into the holidays, further constrained internal management availability.  They needed a very strong facilitator/leader to take charge and drive the engagement at the same time, rolling up their sleeves to execute on the strategy.  Initially, departments were only focused on a hiring solution, however, the gap was so large, it required all departments to come together to build a collective and more comprehensive strategy.

Solution

Bradson Consulting was asked to assist in the effort – one that called for a business consulting solution, not a traditional project management solution. We put in place a seasoned consultant that brought a deep understanding of business strategy and process design/facilitation.  Our consultant designed and led the client through the following elements:

Situation and needs analysis, gap definition, resource strategy, strategy execution, and metrics/feedback process
Data driven process that got all managers on same page regarding a department level challenge
Considered alternative staff planning levers: vendor outsourcing, staff retention, staff development, and workload balancing
“Living” strategy and execution documents followed by the team
Weekly executive dashboards and summary reports used for team decision-making

Results

Within 3 weeks, Bradson was able to improve collaboration across department silos and get individuals working toward a cross-team solution.   As a project catalyst, we were successful in gaining significant client input to the solution, improving adoption and execution. Specific results included:

Designed and executed on a strategy within 8 weeks of project initiation
Improved month over month staff retention by 5% and increased number of critical department resources by 23% in matter of 4 months
Signed contracts with two vendor staff augmentation solutions
Strategy and Execution Process Documentation that is recognized as a “best practice” company approach

This solution gained strong recognition by executive management and is now a capability being applied across other departments (i.e., IT, Operations, Marketing).  As a “value-add”, our consultant also introduced the executive team to a long range business and workforce planning strategy that can be aligned with the company’s strategic planning process.

The Bradson Difference

Bradson Consulting uniquely applies an extremely pragmatic and incremental view toward all its projects. In this case, Bradson’s business consulting approach and strong facilitation skills helped to gain traction early and establish a roadmap all could understand and contribute to.  Our approach is highly flexible adhere to client timelines, client SME availability, and expected results.  It’s not surprising we were asked for input and advice on several tangential efforts due to the strong relationship and trust built via the workforce planning project.  We strive to create these types of relationships through each and every project we deliver.

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