One on One with Dynamics' Dr. Andrew Ritcheson

Dynamics Research Corporation's healthcare practice has long been at the forefront of providing clinical expertise and IT solutions to ensure our nation's service members receive the best possible medical care. Over the last two years, a new approach, known as 'clinical consulting', has emerged, which seeks practitioners who combine the medical expertise of a physician with the problem solving skills of a consultant. Dr. Andrew Ritcheson, Senior Program Manager and Consulting Psychologist of DRC's Federal Group, has pioneered this new frontier, and it's already paying dividends—leading to a growth rate of more than 100 percent in the practice over the last two years. Not bad at a time when many companies are still recovering from the throes of the Great Recession. Ritcheson sat down recently with Consulting One on One to discuss the firm's growth and the overall state of the healthcare market.

Consulting: What is 'clinical consulting' and how does it serve the client?

Ritcheson: The original precept was this: a [subject matter expert] is pretty good, but a SME who can consult is even better. SMEs are good at developing focused requirements; they come in often times for very specific problems and will remain or move on to a different engagement. When I first began considering this idea, it seemed to me that if you can have a professional of that caliber who was also able to remain in place to implement the changes or solutions or interventions that their original insight provided, that would be even better. For example, if you brought in a psychiatrist into an engagement that was about developing new models of care, or providing different kind of treatment for returning service members with traumatic brain injuries, it's fine to have them able to say, this is the standard of care, this is the clinical practice you should utilize, but if they're also able to address broader concerns, that's going to be even better.