Cardinal Consulting, Inc. (CCI) began providing consulting services in August of 2000. The firm was formed by two retired PriceWaterhouseCoopers Health Care Information Technology Partners and a Health Information Management Systems Society Chief Information Officer of the year who was also the founder of the standards organization Health Level-7. The firm was intended to act as a vehicle for the three to jointly provide management consulting services from their home offices in the New York, Detroit and Chicago areas. Over time colleagues with comparable experience joined and the firm grew to thirty principals. It began and remained a non-traditional consulting firm (traditional as in, Maister’s Finders, Minders, Grinders) as there was only one level, “Principal” and thirty years of relevant experience was the norm. Relationships with uniquely skilled individuals who had formed firms prior to CCI added the category of “Affiliate”.

Consulting firms depend on their professional staff to sell and execute engagements. Because CCI was comprised of consultants that had been Partners, Senior Managers of major consulting firms or CIO’s of large hospitals or health systems, the firm was able to compete and win large and complex engagements. Typically, CCI would provide engagement leadership, methodologies, know-how and specified deliverables while leveraging the client’s staff and transferring tools and techniques to help the client maintain and update the work product. Firm leadership and most CCI consultants were in their second career and usually did not depend on consulting revenue for a living. This meant that neither practice growth nor personal productivity was a key determinant in matching the client’s needs with the consultants’ skills and interest and deciding if CCI proposed on an assignment.

In 2011 CCI trademarked and began using the name Cavanaugh Consulting Group and (CCG). This was done to assure a branded name that closely resembled (at least by acronym, CCI to CCG) the corporate name. The firm operated as a cooperative or alliance although it is organized as an Illinois Corporation and provided accounting services and both Liability and Errors & Omissions insurance. Principals maintained their own client relationships and were not bound by a non-compete agreement. CCI was hard to get in and most that left did so to take leadership roles in a larger organization or to formally, actually, retire.

 

By 2017 it was becoming clear that the principals were no longer identifying opportunities at the same frequency as had been the case for the prior sixteen years. At the same time, many of the firm’s client contacts were reaching retirement age requiring more effort to develop new relationships. Also, the demand for strategic services was changing. The Health Information Technology for Economic and Clinical Health (HITECH) Act had focused health care providers on selecting and implementing electronic medical record systems to the exclusion of typical system wide information technology analysis and planning. CCG was primarily a strategy firm not an implementation firm. CCG had intentionally avoided vendor commitments so as to remain an unbiased advocate for providers. Once the product and vendor selections were made, providers focused on installing and implementing the systems selected. The firm had no interest in declaring an allegiance to any vendor product nor the desire to employ junior staff to become certified by a vendor in a particular software offering. By 2019 firm staff and affiliates were retiring and the Principals were looking at alternative models or approaches to maintain the alliance. This ongoing assessment continues today.

CCG has had some unique attributes, including:

• CCG is organized on a knowledge model, not a leverage model. Consequently, we have no junior staff; CCG’s principals are our consultants and have an average of 30 years experience in health care.
• Most CCG principals have been partners or senior consulting managers with Big-4 consulting firms, CIO’s or senior health care executives.
• CCG has consulted with all of the hospitals listed on the  US News and World Report Best Hospital Honor Roll and over 1,000 health care organizations.
• CCG does not have revenue sharing relationships with vendors; nor do we develop, sell, resell or represent software or hardware products. Therefore, we can be completely objective in our analyses and recommendations.
• CCG has no bureaucracy and minimal overhead. As a result, we are able to offer our clients a unique business model: highly experienced consultants at a fraction of our prior Big 4 consulting rates. We provide the expertise of a large firm, combined with the personal attention of a small firm. It’s a win-win for us, and a win-win for our clients.
• CCG is a very client focused; we are a private self-funded firm; we enjoy professional consulting and we are not driven by practice growth objectives.
• CCG neither solicits nor accepts employment applications. We selectively approach senior consulting professionals who fit our cultural, ethical, experience and business model.
• Through existing agreements and long-term relationships, CCG teams with leading specialty firms to provide our clients access to the best resources in the industry.

We think these attributes combined to make CCG uniquely qualified to assist clients in addressing their health care business and information technology consulting needs.

In 2011 CCI trademarked and began using the name Cavanaugh Consulting Group and (CCG).