What I Have Learned About Presenting Research Clearly and Logically

Our team’s goal is to assist our client in engaging with the state legislation-making process to ensure equitable treatment of stakeholders in the healthcare system and proper regulation of private equity (PE) acquisitions. For this purpose, we embarked on comparing states with well-developed legislative frameworks and less developed legal environments, accessing whether these judicial practices can be applied. While our research process went smoothly initially, we encountered obstacles as we delved deeper. 

First, we found that media commentaries and academic research have voiced concerns over private equity’s role in the healthcare industry. However, the majority of these concerns only discussed the problems, not the solutions. We divided these concerns by the stages in the PE investment cycle: acquisition, management, and reporting, enabling further refining of our research. In addition, we explored different individuals or groups' distinct roles in the state legislation-making process. For example, the state attorney general can impose conditions or block the healthcare transaction, and the state treasurer is responsible for analyzing the broader economic impacts of the transaction. This approach not only allowed us to find an entry point for the policy research but also let us find more connections between each policy. 

Moreover, the legislation itself does not sufficiently regulate private equity’s participation in the health care system. Instead, it merely highlights what is not allowed on a broad scale. Sometimes, the legislative language can be abstract, posing challenges for us who are not law students to understand. To overcome this, we turned to historical judicial cases which provided more content. This approach enriched our presentation and explained how policies worked in different scenarios. 

I also have recognized that a robust consulting project requires multiple research methods to ensure comprehensive, validated findings. Hence, we intend to interview legal professionals versed in acquiring healthcare services and investigating healthcare fraud or antitrust in healthcare. I hope our suggestions for the client will positively impact a broad range of stakeholders. 

During the interim presentation, I got many concrete suggestions from my peers. The most thought-provoking suggestion was about how to deliver our findings more logically, especially to an audience who is not familiar with the project. Starting the presentation with a background introduction was a good approach. However, we neglected the analytical steps we took as a team. Our project is policy research, which requires making strong connections between lots of data points and establishing connections between policies. Following their suggestions, our team will provide our presentation by framing them first and then giving corresponding solutions to the existing issues. 

To sum up, this challenging project has taught me that consulting is not just about finding solutions. We need to think about connecting things, framing them, and then find a convincing, clear, and logical way to deliver these findings to the client.