Market Analysis For Health Care Centers

1. A summary of your understanding of health care business analyses. In your own words, why is it important? What does it entail?

This paper pertains to the marketing of Health Care Services and provides the steps and history of marketing in health care and the effects of marketing on the health care delivery system from 1950 to 1990. It introduces the health care consumers and their role in the marketing process as well as the factors that influence consumer behavior. These factors influence the success of marketing in health care. It also provides the requirements for successful marketing and current techniques and strategies used by health care organizations.

The change to value based purchasing has bought many challenges to the healthcare industry. With the change to value-based purchasing for payments, it has changed how healthcare organization receive payment and delivery care. The advantage of have value based purchasing is that it improves the quality of care while reducing cost in an effort of aligning patient’s with the right provider and treatment plan (Minemyer, Jun 29, 2016). However, there are many disadvantages, such as it increases the patient volume as counteracting the reduction of procedure volume (Brown, B. & Crapo, 2016). Also it makes providers more responsible for care that is beyond the expected treatment of care needed (Minemyer, Jun 29, 2016). With quality measures tied

The U.S. spends more resources on healthcare than any other nation. Yet, the The Commonwealth Fund (2014, para. 1) claim the U.S. health system consistently ranks last or near last relative to other industrialized nations regarding health outcomes. Consequently, insurance companies are adopting a value-based reimbursement system aimed at containing costs and improving clinical outcomes (U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, n.d., para. 35).

The triad of cost, quality, and access has impacted the development of the Affordable Care Act on many levels. The Affordable Care Act aims to improve the quality of healthcare, while maintaining the cost of health care ("Quality of care," n.d.). Under the Affordable Care Act, there is more funding for each state to assist in treating people with chronic illness. The goal is for these patient populations to have high-quality services at an affordable cost (“Quality of care,” n.d.). To ensure that quality of care is provided, the Affordable Care Act requires quality measures to be met in order for organizations to receive reimbursement. Although the United States still needs improvement in providing high quality health care that is accessible

The business plan of any organization can only occur after a successful strategic plan is form and securely in place. The strategic plan in any corporation, organization, and small business ventures has a vision on where this organization needs to be in the future. “The strategic plan is a long-term (three- to- five years) views of where the organization is going” (Hillestad & Berkowitz, 2004, p. 32). A strategic plan is just that a plan of things to come and how to attain the business or how

United States has no dearth of highly qualified, well-trained doctors and still the US healthcare quality fails to meet the established industry benchmarks. Institute of Medicine’s (IOM’s) 2001 Report, “Crossing the Quality Chasm”, clearly states that the American healthcare delivery system is in need of a pivotal change. (Committee on Quality of Healthcare in America (Institute of Medicine), 2001). The exasperation level is continuously rising amongst both, the patients and the providers, and yet the problem of delivering and receiving high quality care remains unaffected. In order to address this problem of healthcare quality improvement and affordability, the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act (PPACA or Obamacare) was signed in the year 2010. The main aim behind PPACA is to improve healthcare quality and accessibility, at the same time keeping it cost efficient. To facilitate its goal PPACA is trying to achieve the cost effectiveness through reducing the Medicare price growth and regulating the quantity of care by encouraging evidence based practices. This new legislation supports the healthcare system in which the goals of both provider and the patients are better aligned with value as opposed to the quantity of services. Overall the reform under PPACA seeks to establish a direct link between the payments made to the healthcare

The Accountable Care Act put in motion a change from a volume based system to a value based system. With this change, primary-care organizations become the frontline healthcare providers. These organizations drive both individual and continuity of care for their patients. Because chronic conditions account for a large portion of overall healthcare expenditures, having high-performing primary care organizations is quite important. According to Willard and Bodenheimer (2012) there are six building blocks for high-performing primary care organizations:

Healthcare has a market that changes how direct patient care is administered based on the new healthcare laws and insurances. One certain aspect of the market is that it does fluctuate and often at times it gets out of control. One thing that is consistent, is the need to care for the potential people of this market. At the beginning of studying the market analysis for my capstone I was already somewhat aware of how drastic this market changes. Thus far, the capstone has once again reinforced how important it is to study a market by conducting a SWOT & Market Analysis.

The Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act (PPACA) with the creation of the Patient-Centered Outcomes Research Institute (PCORI) has sought out to provide health care providers and other organizations in the medical field, research and data to make better decisions about providing healthcare. These decisions are of course centered on patient-outcomes and cost effectiveness. Since the creation of the PCORI it has focused on very general topics in the medical field and may not address a large enough scope of issues before its reauthorization in 2019. The PCORI needs to focus on more specific and quickly effective issues to maintain its relevancy

With our healthcare system evolving now with the Affordable care Act focusing on less hospitalization and more outpatient settings, there will be more efforts for value-based healthcare, when targeting a specific population health group, to focus in providing better quality and patient-center care with more wellness programs and preventive regiments

Marketing has become so prominent in health care today because the health care system is more and more resembling a business. There are many functions to be performed and many complex and sophisticated skills involved. There has been so much growth and competition that health care is advertised and marketed like any other product.

In all industries, competition among businesses has long been encouraged as a mechanism to increase value for patients. In other words, competition ensures the provision of better products and services to satisfy the needs of customers (Glover & Rivers, 2009). In the health care industry, competition has an impact on many relational perspectives. There have been several studies examining the relationships between competition and quality of health care, competition and health care system costs, and competition and patient satisfaction. Some elements of competition in health care are price, quality, convenience, and superior products and

The concept of health services marketing is centered on “the analysis, planning, implementation, and control of carefully formulated programs designed to promote voluntary exchanges of values with target markets with the purpose of achieving organizational objectives (Longest et al. 2000, p 358). The marketing department of any health care organization requires knowledge of the current and future needs and desires of the target market, which will allow strategic planners to determine services and products that can be offered. An assessment of the target markets

The positive outcomes that have resulted due to value base programs have caused the model to gain traction and ignite one of the largest changes in history in the health care marketplace. By linking reimbursements to service quality, insurers such as the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services have facilitated a massive leap forward in the performance of United States health care providers. This achievement is a considerable accomplishment in the face of an institution that has received reimbursement from insurers via a fee-for-service model during the last 75 years. Soon, valued based payment models will represent the norm as more insurers support initiatives such as shared savings program, integrated clinical care, and accountable care payment models.