LEADERSHIP DEVELOPMENT SERIES : DELOITTE

Continuing with the Leadership Development Series, Mr. Afzal Sulaiman, Director at Deloitte and Mr. Arnab Choudhury, Director at Deloitte Consulting took a session at the SIHS Auditorium on 21^st January 2016 at 12:10 PM.

 The session started with a brief welcome and introductory speech by the students followed by felicitation of the guests by Dr. A.P. Pandit.

 The guests started the session by introducing themselves and about their sphere of work in Deloitte. They shared about different work domains of the Deloitte viz Accounting, Taxing, Consultancy, Financial advisory etc. Both of them being from the Consultancy domain shared about their line of work which is Technology Consultancy under which they handle the Application management services of the Healthcare IT.

They spoke about the basic usage of the EMRs and the ERPs in the Consultancy and made us aware of the big EMRs across the globe like CERNER, AllScripts, and McKesson among others. They mentioned about EPIC being the most prevalent EMR package having 16-20% market share and which is growing at steady rate of 2-4% per year. They mentioned about EVERGREEN which is a Deloitte specific solution which makes extensive use of ERP.

After giving this brief overview about Deloitte and their work profiles they invited questions from the audience as they wanted the session to be more of an interactive one, rather than being a monologue.

 Students asked them what the driving force was for the U.S healthcare delivery system. Mr. Afzal briefed about the shift in the driving force from being money few decades back to quality care in the present day context. He believes that while a few years back the United States was on the same lines in terms of healthcare delivery as India is today, ie, Hospitals worked more like Hotels where sick people were their biggest boon, they needed them to make money, today the trend has shifted more to Preventive healthcare. The insurance companies of the U.S also promote this concept so as to avoid the label of “making money by denying healthcare” as promotion of preventive healthcare would ensure less people falling sick which in turn would benefit them as well as the people. Students also asked them about why quality healthcare is so costly? The biggest reasons, according to Arnab Sir, were the high costs of drugs and R & D while Afzal Sir believes it is the aversion to preventive and promotive healthcare which causes people to suffer at later stages and the costs of treatment at advanced stages sour quite high. When asked about whether technology can be a solution to revert the high costs of healthcare, Afzal Sir said he believes that technology is not end-all and be-all solution. It is about adoption of right technology at right time and the ability of technology to adapt to changes and requirements which serves well. He vehemently reiterated the importance of CHANGE. He believes that it is the only thing constant. And anything or anyone which/who is change-aversive has to fall. He cited examples of Nokia and Goldman Sachs, to fortify his views. Mr. Arnab strongly supported these views of Mr. Afzal. Mr. Arnab also gave insights about HIPAA (Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act) and about PHI (Protected Health Information Services) and about how these laws affect their working as healthcare consultants. Someone also asked about the CSR activities of the Deloitte to which Afzal sir apprised us with the various CSR activities Deloitte employees undertake from cleaning lakes to educating underprivileged children to taking care of the sick. He said they in Deloitte believe in cause.

 A student wanted to know about how Deloitte digitization can aid healthcare delivery in public sector to which Mr. Arnab replied that his segment is more U.S centric which is less into the public sector, and that it is Deloitte India which serves public sector as well. One of the students asked a candid yet very apt question as to what recruiters at Deloitte look for in their potential recruitees to which Mr. Afzal very tersely answered that they look for people with passion and dynamism, people who want to work hard, seek knowledge and are willing to learn & grow. They want people who are bold and proactive with a committed mind, body & soul to succeed. He said recruiters at Deloitte do not look for people with extraordinary IQ but  above average people with extraordinary zeal to learn and succeed. He emphasized on the importance of problem solving skills and good communication skills as he believes these two are the forte for being a contributor to Deloitte. A student was keen on knowing if Deloitte believes in Payment transparency. Mr. Afzal appreciated the stretch of imagination of this student and said payment system in healthcare largely remains opaque or rather is kept opaque as he believes that is by design and there can’t be a formula to calculate the costs. There can be clinical pathways to calculate costs but surety of those pathways remains uncertain according to him and therefore transparency in this system is a tough job. He believes keeping this system opaque serves the people in this industry well, hence it is kept so along with the herculean difficulty in estimation of exact costs. Students were keen on asking more questions but due to constraint of time the session had to end after one hour. All in all, it was a very enlightening and educative session and students could very well bank upon the knowledge and expertise of these two stalwarts of the industry. Both the guests were also impressed by the ambience and hospitality of the SIHS as well as by the enthusiasm and knowledge-seeking attribute of the students.