Mercer leads the way in people-centered healthcare transformation 

The 2023 Forbes and Statista list of The World’s Best Management Consulting Firms is out, and Mercer has secured a prestigious four-star ranking for its consulting work in healthcare and life sciences.1

Mercer performed well among the 229 companies across four continents based on rankings by client recommendations. What sets us apart? Our people-focused healthcare transformation is backed by industry expertise, innovative provider-specific solutions, and a robust research and consulting base in HR, rewards, benefits, investments and technology.
Our commitment to revolutionizing healthcare, placing people at the heart of every innovation and change, distinguishes Mercer. We empower organizations to forge lasting, meaningful transformations, ensuring their strength today and in the future, to enable them to consistently deliver exceptional patient care and a great place to work. 
 John Derse, Senior Partner and Healthcare Industry Leader, Mercer

Navigating healthcare’s new landscape

With our unparalleled industry experience, Mercer has collaborated with more than 450 healthcare organizations in the United States — our largest concentration of clients in any single industry. Insights from this extensive collaboration have helped us to understand the nuances of healthcare workforce issues. Our expertise enables us to assist organizations in their transformation journeys, offering customized solutions that enhance agility, responsiveness and rejuvenation. With Mercer’s guidance, healthcare providers can effectively address workforce challenges, ensuring a resilient and adaptive future in this rapidly evolving industry.
2023 Forbes’ World’s Best Management Consulting Firms

Helping change how healthcare works

According to John Derse, Senior Partner and Healthcare Industry Leader at Mercer, “It’s an extraordinary time in healthcare. The fundamentals of care delivery must change regarding how people are deployed, trained, rewarded and appreciated. Unless we deconstruct and reconstruct work in a better, safer, more efficient way, there is too much in the system that cannot be sustained — not to mention the negative impact on patient care. Sustainable transformation is what is required.”
The time to innovate is now. Healthcare providers face a new normal of endemic labor shortages, sustained high labor costs, record numbers of caregivers leaving their professions due to burnout and massive technological change that impacts the work of nearly everyone in healthcare. The providers that thrive in the decade ahead will be the ones that think big and act boldly, without delay.
 David Mitchel, Partner, Mercer Workforce Transformation practice
Mercer recommends healthcare organizations start with four steps to reimagine work, prioritize issues faster and align all stakeholders toward transformation. 
This image shows Talent Implications in the middle with four off shoot: Business strategy, Executive Insights, External Kevin market and internal Kevin market
The second image identifies 4 workforce gaps and risks: Talent supply model, talent demand model, organization capabilities, change readiness
The third image identifies model solutions: Talent sources can buy and build and/or borrow and bot Talent dimensions can be quantity, location and quality
The fourth image highlights how to take action. Attraction, retention, skills-based solution, work design, rewards, leadership, employee value proposition and total worker health

Sustainable transformation is a partnership

Mercer’s differentiated approach, supported by deep and broad industry experience, will help ensure project success. This approach is:

We believe people are at the heart of transformation, so by developing both the organization and the people within, we make transformation mutually beneficial. We create great employee experiences throughout the transformation journey and design processes based on interactions to ensure they are comprehensive, seamless and value adding. This is critical when appealing to both clinical and nonclinical audiences.

We deliver fundamental transformation by co-creating the new normal with our clients. We employ agile and immersive working methods to build solutions that reflect our deep understanding of the client’s unique culture and needs. This knowledge transfer is at the heart of why healthcare providers value their work with Mercer. 

We deliver hypothesis-driven and evidence-based transformation underpinned by state-of-the-art, proprietary thought leadership. Our senior experts observe, listen and challenge the status quo, leveraging decades of experience and globally recognized thought leadership in clinical, operating, and human capital data and analytics. 

We integrate change management into every project and address the varying needs of all stakeholder groups to create lasting change through communication, dialogue and reflection.

We are integral to our clients’ teams, activating people around us. Working closely together, we embed learning and digital assets while building the capabilities our clients need for a successful and sustainable journey beyond our engagement.
Our clients appreciate that we have a shared vision for the industry, centered on creating sustainable transformation — imparting tools, technology and teachings to enable lasting, impactful change and greater agility. Mercer’s differentiating people-centered approach helps to ensure project success.
 John Derse, Senior Partner and Healthcare Industry Leader, Mercer

Mercer is uniquely positioned to leverage our deep and foundational core around compensation and benefits, risk, investments, and broader HR consulting. The complementary resources of Oliver Wyman and Marsh McLennan position us to cross-solve for clients across risk, strategic and human capital investments.

The Forbes article on The World’s Best Management Consulting Firms is available on the Forbes website


1 Methodology: To compile the list of the World’s Best Management Consulting Firms, Forbes partnered with market research company Statista on extensive online surveys of both clients and senior executives at consulting firms in 40 countries. Firms that received the most
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