We are dedicated to improving healthcare for the communities that our clients serve—this has long been part of our stated mission.
Healthcare improvements have dramatically increased life expectancy, and new treatments are improving quality of life for many populations. Yet with this progress comes daunting economic challenges. For at least 40 years, healthcare spending has outpaced GDP growth by some two percentage points in most developed countries. Across publicly and privately financed healthcare systems, escalating spending has crowded out investments in education and social services, eroded growth in personal incomes, and reduced returns on invested capital in many regions.
Most governments and healthcare industry leaders understand that spending increases cannot continue indefinitely and are looking for ways to drive innovation and efficiencies while improving health. That’s where we come in.
What we do
We work with private and public healthcare leaders to identify innovative ways to tackle today’s biggest healthcare challenges. We are at the forefront of making healthcare better, more affordable, and more accessible for millions of people around the world. Our impact spans the globe and some examples include:
- Improved the affordability of healthcare by eliminating over $13 billion of waste and inefficiency globally in 2018 alone
- Supported public programs and private insurers to expand health insurance coverage to nearly two million people in the United States, as well as in Europe and Asia–Pacific
- Cut emergency room wait times by as much as two hours, reduced ambulance diversion due to ER congestion by up to 80 percent in hospitals across 15 US states
- Developed new product design capabilities for med-tech companies in hospital markets in Southeast Asia and co-developed a newborn monitoring device that will save the lives of thousands of newborn babies
- Implemented outcomes-based payment for maternity services, improving prenatal care for over 400,000 pregnant women globally
- Established an innovative partnership between a supermarket chain and health insurer in Europe, leading to improved staff health and a reduction in illness costs
- Boosted care quality and efficiency for over five million individuals with asthma and other respiratory illnesses, as well as improving the management of care for 750,000 individuals with long term conditions in Europe
- Deployed advanced analytics, digital, and design-thinking to transform Nigeria’s vaccine supply chain, delivering 30 percent improvement in baseline performance and developed an emergency operations center to help reduce polio disease levels by 99 percent
Our approach is highly collaborative: from supporting government agencies with technical analysis, as they set priorities, to working with clinicians—for example, to increase nurse satisfaction and reduce turnover. We work hand in hand with clients to help deliver measurable impact and build their capabilities.
We create cutting-edge research on issues that matter in healthcare and share our perspectives at leading industry forums and as publications. Our forward-thinking research centers including the Center for US Health System Reform, McKinsey Cancer Center, the Center for Societal Benefit through Healthcare, and the Center for Healthcare Innovation have published on healthcare reform; social determinants of health; tech-enabled healthcare; and smart hospitals, productivity, and developed integrated perspectives that contributes to decision making around solving the biggest health issues across the globe.
Who we are
We bring a global perspective and deep understanding of how healthcare works, with the experience to counsel senior healthcare stakeholders, plus the size and scale that ensures real expertise across the landscape.
Our team comprises more than 1,700 consultants worldwide—including over 160 physicians, nurses, social workers, pharmacists, and other clinicians. Over 250 actuaries, data scientists, and analysts apply advanced analytics to financial, clinical, and socio-economic data, while more than 100 engineers and design professionals build and deploy digital solutions.
McKinsey healthcare consultants speak over 100 languages and have supported clients in 70-plus countries. Nearly half of our consultants, analysts, and engineers (including our partners) are women.