Global Issues

Global consulting is a big industry right now, and my company is getting increasingly involved.  Consulting in a global environment is a natural fit.  Many countries are developing and use the U.S. as a blueprint for success and capitalism at its best. 

My firm does a lot of work in India.  We follow the trend.  India has become big business.  My firm even outsources internal functions for employees to Deloitte India employees.  If we have a problem with the firm intranet and call the hotline, we will get a fellow Deloitte employee... from India.  My company is also in the usual European countries and China. 

My particular field is healthcare.  Global healthcare has many facets that we are looking at.  First, medical tourism has become a huge business.  Deloitte does a lot of analysis on this practice, which will be impacted by health care reform.  People are on different sides of the fence on how health reform will affect medical tourism.  So, we need people on the ground to monitor daily.  By reducing the restrictions created by health plans, some believe that those who would have gone overseas for care will now get this care in the U.S.  However, others believe that the access constraints will force more people overseas.  To take it a step further, it is possible that a number of providers will set up overseas practices instead of facing higher patient demand with lower reimbursement pay.

Another global area we are looking at is access to care and the re-emergence of global diseases.  In areas of Africa, for example, patients might be hundreds of miles from the nearest clinic.  Medical technology companies can help bring mobile health care to the patients.  This is a big industry, but the return on investment for third world countries is low.  As far as the re-emergence of formerly eradicated diseases, we use this as a research forum.  For example, polio has re-emerged in some countries.  The U.S. is in a position to get to the root of the problem and help patients dealing with these issues.  However, the biggest reason behind our involvement is how it might impact us.  Consulting firms like mine have doctors and scientists on staff who can try and proactively recognize how re-emerging diseases in other countries could eventually lead to the same issue here.  Data analytics can try and predict which diseases are most likely to re-emerge here.