Insights

What a scoping conversation covers

The first conversation is about whether this helps you, and sometimes the answer is no.

Agencies expect a first meeting to be a pitch. This one is closer to a diagnostic, and the most useful outcome is sometimes “this is not your problem, and here is what we think is.”

What we ask

  1. What are you actually trying to change? Overdose deaths, emergency department load, continuity of care for a specific population, response time to a supply change — these lead to different programs, and “the opioid crisis” leads to none of them.
  2. Which population? Defined by what rule, of what size, in what geography.
  3. What have you already tried, and what happened? Including the things that did not work. This is the single most informative answer in the conversation and the one agencies are most reluctant to give.
  4. What do you already hold? Monitoring data, medical examiner data, EMS data, Medicaid claims. Some agencies are further along than they think, and a component that duplicates something you already run is a waste of your money.
  5. Who owns this clinically? Not the procurement contact — the person whose professional judgment governs it. Programs without one drift toward whatever is easy to measure.
  6. What would make you stop? Asked early, because it is the question that shapes the whole design.

What we tell you

  • Whether the components address the thing you named, honestly, including where they do not.
  • Which components have weak evidence behind them, before you ask. See what is not established.
  • What data would have to move, so your counsel can start looking at it.
  • What we would want measured, including the measures that could show the program failing.
  • Roughly what scale of engagement makes sense — cost is discussed here, against a defined scope, rather than published as a figure that would mislead.

How it can end

Three ways, all fine. You proceed to design. You decide it is not the right time or the right problem. Or we tell you it will not help — which happens, and it is a better outcome for everyone than a pilot that was never going to work.

There is no obligation attached to the first conversation, and there is no proposal at the end of it unless you ask for one.

More: how engagement works · start a conversation.