#6 Stop Hiring Consultants

We began the year with a list of 7 ways your health center leadership and mid-level managers can start the year off on the right foot. So how do team members who have such a broad job description stay focused and start the first quarter off intentionally? So, this brings us to number 6!

#6 - Stop Hiring Consultants

Yep. You heard it. A consultant telling you to stop hiring consultants. Consultants can be very helpful. They can often provide a fresh set of eyes on a project or technical expertise with seldom-confronted problems. So what I really mean is stop hiring a certain type of consultant. Consultants earn a bad name for our industry when they are hired for a project, come in, fix a problem, and then leave. Or worse, they come in, partially fix a problem, and then leave. Both of these models build-in an intrinsic dependency on the consultant, thus, creating a continuous potential business pipeline. But this model does little to train health center staff or create sustainability in your programs.

Stop hiring these types of consultants.

Invest in consultants who bring their expertise to your health center to build up your staff and have a goal of teaching you “how to fish”, rather than just serving you the beautifully presented, high-dollar King Salmon. A good question to ask a consultant before you sign the contract is, “How are you going to work yourself out of a job?” After they change their shorts and come back, listen for systems, products, and processes they plan to put into place that will teach you and the other health center staff to be a better team. Look for consultants who bring the most sustainable value and will, in fact, work themselves out of a job.

Need help raising your health center to the next level and move toward HRSA continuous compliance? Contact your health center-focused team at RegLantern at www.RegLantern.com. Our FQHC Mock Site Visits and web-based HRSA Continual Compliance tools will help save you time and money.