AArete helps government entities not only develop, but also implement healthcare policies and programmes. Through our Center of Data Excellence (CODE) and AArete Research Center (AARC) we assist with primary and secondary research as well as advanced analytics to provide the solid empirical base essential for a robust patient-centred approach. Through a combination of your data, our internal data and third-party data, we establish the parameters and scenarios associated with your policy. We support public health policy and programme development, and once final, we support its roll-out, leveraging our project management discipline. Our healthcare industry experience allows us to guide you in finding the most effective ways to engage payer, provider or biopharma stakeholders. 

For example, many states are developing Medicaid waiver programmes. At AArete, we can aid in designing those programmes to be efficient and effective. Likewise, many states have pharmaceutical formularies. As those formularies are being designed or refined, they call on our vast experience for guidance.Finally, we also support the appropriate application of a federal or state policy/programme by providing the necessary primary/secondary review and assessment services, including medical consultation services, leveraging our panel of physicians, specialists, nurses, pharmacists, etc. as applicable.

For instance, providing clinical subject matter expertise for appeals concerning eligibility determination and redetermination and rendering expert opinion. By doing so, AArete is able to qualify the means in which these policies and programmes were designed to serve through a data-driven, clinically sound, patient-centric, cost-effective approach.

Public sector institutions have access to ample amounts of data on social problems that could impact real-world issues. The blockade comes in the inability to sift through the tremendous amount of data and diluting it into actionable insights around policies. AArete’s approach to public sector consulting offers advanced analytics capabilities that provide you with tools that you can move in-house to effectively continue managing your own analytics.   

For example, healthcare policymakers are interested in social determinants of health, such as homelessness rates and food deserts – AArete can help identify and analyse the data that impact these issues. As an example, an urban archdiocese was interested in the effects of a neighbourhood’s broken street lights – AArete evaluated the data and discovered a correlation with increased crime rates, empowering the archdiocese’s argument that replacing light bulbs was an inexpensive way to improve overall neighbourhood safety.

Across all industries, AArete strives to make money go farther without needing to reduce headcount. In public sector institutions, specific opportunities exist in digital transformation: using digital tools to make processes more efficient, resulting in digitally enabled employees that can focus their efforts on the more critical tasks rather than routine ones. Occasionally, digital transformation involves process automation: having more of those processes done by “bots”. 

While most consulting firms focus on strategic assessments of digital transformation at the 30,000-foot level, AArete specialises in implementation. We ensure that your digital transformation initiatives will be successful by working hand-in-hand with your front-line personnel on implementation to deliver tangible value. 

Additionally, AArete has experience in various forms of strategic cost reduction. For example, we can help reduce indirect administrative costs through strategic sourcing and procurement optimisation. We tailor our services to your needs and guarantee our results.

IT plays a major role in any public sector department’s operations. AArete can help optimise those operations by evaluating your organisational structure, roles, responsibilities and processes to ensure that you are appropriately governing IT infrastructure, security and data while preparing for future regulatory changes like Medicaid Management Information System (MMIS) modernisation. For example, with the ever-increasing amount of data being aggregated from a variety of sources, we assist with data governance services to ensure that your data is secure and used correctly. AArete can support all facets of developing an IT strategy and organisation that is prepared for inevitable rapid technological changes. Additionally, AArete optimises clients’ IT spend in a variety of ways.

For example, we work to reduce the costs of acquisition, maintenance and services through price negotiations and demand management. We bring a private sector approach to cost optimisation to ensure our public sector clients are obtaining the best value available within their budgets.

AArete’s clinical staff bring decades of experience supporting government agencies to meet the needs of their constituents while fulfilling their fiduciary responsibilities. Our medical doctors, nurses, psychiatrists and other clinical specialists are experts in their respective fields. We utilise this expertise to perform eligibility and utilisation reviews and consultations for government departments, focused on ensuring the right individuals receive the right services that align with each department’s mission and rules.

For example, on behalf of a state department providing services to the developmentally disabled, AArete’s medical doctors and psychiatrists perform comprehensive eligibility determination reviews for individuals appealing denial of service, understanding the balance that state agencies strive to maintain of serving the most vulnerable while working within budget constraints. AArete can support the entire process, from the initial application review through to appeals and judicial hearings, where our clinicians serve as expert witnesses.

The AArete technology services team leverages its 20+ years of combined strategy and technology experience to deliver innovative, efficiency-driving solutions to our public sector clients. We utilise the expertise of our strategy consultants, solution architects and engineers to help agencies engineer the best-fit architecture, select the right technology stack, migrate to new systems and create secure custom solutions for each agency’s unique mandates and mission. Select examples of our work with federal and state agencies include:

• Assisting with the design and development of an enterprise human capital repository: consolidating internal and external data sources with master data management technology. The golden and secure record of personnel serves to operationalise downstream applications and supports human performance analytics.
• Designing the data architecture, engineering and large-scale data migration to support dissemination of large-scale public survey data for a special group within an agency whose mandate is to empower the public to make better decisions using data through a continuously adaptive, customer-centric, open and accessible platform.
• Performing comprehensive software product research, platform evaluation and selection, and development to serve an agency’s mandate of open data and mobility. AArete brings full lifecycle development expertise and agile innovation to the public sector and offers strategy, implementation and support services in analytics, data architecture and engineering, the cloud, data science, custom application development, UX/UI design and testing.