Five ways to understand and move your market position

The last three years have forced health systems to realign services; first, to address the demands of COVID-19 and later to meet pent-up demand for care, all while addressing community health needs, competitive positioning and right-sizing of services.

With the pandemic as a catalyst, today's healthcare market is increasingly influenced by new business models aimed at delivering superior healthcare experiences. Healthcare is seeing a rapid shift to consumer-centric care models — fundamentally changing how healthcare systems compete for market share and revenue. 

Is your health system constantly asking:

• Are there service lines that we should add or remove?
• Are there physician groups that we should align with?
• Are there hospitals with which we should align?
• Should we add a new facility or program based on the shift of procedures to outpatient?
  

Strategic planning is vital for revenue growth. But what do you need to know to get there? To truly understand and move your market position, take time to: 

1.   Get a bird’s eye view of your market. 

Use tools to understand the patient population in your market through service lines, payer mix, physician productivity mix, and demographic and geographic data. Sg2's MarketEdge offers a variety of tools to help analyze this information. 

2.   Understand what is happening at the facility level. 

Use Statewide Planning and Research Cooperative System and claims data to analyze what is happening within your four walls. Determine your strengths and weaknesses to better meet the needs of the patient population while aligning your health system’s services with its financial goals. Sg2's MarketEdge State Data Analysis and Patient Flow applications offer facility-level insight.  

3.   Compare yourself to others in the market.  

To determine where there are opportunities for your system, you must compare it to other organizations in the local market. Understanding the whole market will help your organization choose how to position and portray itself within the market. Sg2's MarketEdge offers many tools to accomplish this. Having this wealth of knowledge allows you to pivot in strategic ways. 

4.   Understand historical trends through SPARCS data. 

Use SPARCS data to learn historical trends at the service line level and analyze historic physician relationships. Sg2’s State Data Analysis tool includes SPARCS data from 2018 through 2021.

5.   Understand what services are shifting from inpatient to outpatient. 

By understanding this shift, you’ll be better able to position yourself and align your services to meet the needs of the patient population as the shift occurs. Sg2’s Market Demand Forecast tool helps to plan for the future.

Disrupters and game-changers — like telehealth, payers as providers, retail clinics, acute care-at-home and more — are altering how and where patients enter the healthcare system, short-circuiting the traditional patient journey and capturing a growing slice of market share and patient revenue. Armed with the five ways to understand and move your market position, you'll have an accurate assessment of your marketplace and where your organization stands, and be in a place to make intelligent growth decisions.  

Looking to optimize your strategic planning for enhanced revenue growth? Learn how DataGen can help.