Healthcare Provider Management Consultant with Deloitte Consulting

FRED PENNIC

INTRODUCTION:

My name is Fred Pennic and I am currently a Healthcare Provider Management Consultant with Deloitte Consulting. I have been in this role for 9 months and previously worked for Accenture for 3 years in their Healthcare Provider practice.  Meet Fred Pennic


JOB DESCRIPTION:

In my role as a Healthcare Provider Management Consultant I am responsible for managing industry leading healthcare provider packages’ solutions in delivering cost benefits, efficiency, and streamlining organizational business processes to my potential clients.


BACKGROUND, EXPERIENCE, and HOW I GOT HIRED:

I began my career as an EMPI Specialist at UAB Health System right after receiving my bachelor’s in Health Information Management. As an EMPI (Enterprise Master Patient Index) Specialist at UAB Health System, I was responsible for maintaining the EMPI system. A few months later, I left UAB Health System to work for Cerner Corporation as a Solution Delivery Consultant, which began my journey into the health IT consulting industry. During my time at Cerner, I worked in several areas that helped provide me a broad experience, as well as a strong understanding of the flow of health information/healthcare delivery from point of entry to billing.

After working at Cerner  for almost 3 years, I decided to broaden my scope even more by moving  towards management consulting which lead me to working at Accenture as a Healthcare Provider Clinical Consultant in their Healthcare Provider firm. During my 3 years at Accenture, I would honestly say this was the place where I truly become a “management consultant.” During my time at Accenture; I had the opportunity to work with multiple vendors as well as working on multiple implementations and strategy/assessment consulting engagements including clinical documentation, pharmacy, business cases, and revenue cycle.  My diverse challenging engagement at Cerner and Accenture, as well building my personal brand and network is what led to the opportunity to work for Deloitte Consulting.


DAY IN THE LIFE:

My typical schedule involves traveling to the client on Monday morning and coming home Thursday evening. My schedule, role, and responsibilities are heavily dependent upon my current client and the phase of the engagement. Right now, I’m working on a health plan (payer) project which is new for me as my career experience has been primarily working in the healthcare provider area involving the implementation/assessment of EMR/EHR systems. My day usually involves attending several client meetings and managing work/responsibilities from several workstreams including PMO, Standard Delivery Life Cycle, and Architecture Management.  One of my priorities at this moment is creating our suggested operating model for the client. Some of the challenges are trying to understand the client’s needs and culture along with their viewpoint of an “operating model” since every client views businesses processes different.

After a long day on the client site, I spend my nights in the hotel preparing for meetings/presentations for the week. In addition, the majority of my evenings on the road are spent working on my other Deloitte responsibilities including:

  • Team lead working on writing a white paper on the “Technology Implications for State Health Insurance Exchanges”
  • Assist in creating a “boot camp” curriculum to train non healthcare provider consultants about healthcare provider clinical adoption in the human capital  service line
  • Performing account planning and research on state health information exchanges for the executive leadership and assisting in proposal efforts

Outside of Deloitte, I am also focusing on launching a patient portal plug-in tool with my business partner for healthcare providers, vendors, and consumers.  We hope to launch the tool within the next coming months and I am extremely excited. As you can see my days and nights are extremely busy; however, I am growing and learning as a result of my challenging and hectic schedule. I often question if there are ever enough hours in the day to accomplish all of my goals and exceed my responsibilities; however, I know the experience I am gaining is invaluable to my future career development.  I also have my own “healthcare IT consultant” blog dedicated to professionals like myself who want to stay in tune with the health IT industry. I am also active on Twitter.

CAREER ADVICE:

My career advice for those with a strong interest in the health IT industry is to stay current with all of the current news and trends within the industry. It is an exciting time in the industry and if you can find your “sweet spot” or niche you can become an invaluable asset to an employer, as well as the industry. Focus on the “big picture” and think of the long term benefits instead of short term benefits. I strongly believe it is up to you to take ownership of your career and always focus on building your personal brand.  Aggressively continuing build your network is vital and it will help you progress in your career.

FINAL THOUGHTS:

Currently, my future goals are to leverage my health it consulting background/knowledge base to make the transition from management consultant to focusing on business development within the health IT industry. I am excited about the new and emerging trends in the industry such as the utilization of mobile health applications, cloud computing, and creating interoperability between the provider and patient.  There’s so much more in store for the industry and I just want to ensure that I play an integral part in its future growth and success.

Fred Pennic

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1 Comment

  • Fred, this is a really good post. You’ve provided some key insight into the HIT consulting space. I agree with your synopsis on the complexities involved in dealing with clients and custom IT solutions. I wish you the best of luck on your entrepreneurial endeavors as well. Keep up the good work!

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