Healthcare industry trends have shown that consumer driven demand for convenience, ease of access and value-based care in healthcare has led to the rise of the neighborhood hospital.
What is a neighborhood hospital?
Neighborhood hospitals, also referred to as micro-hospitals or community hospitals, offer similar service lines as a more traditional hospital, but with a smaller footprint. Buildings tend to range from 15,000 to 50,000 square feet, and will often only have 10 to 15 beds.
Why the increase in neighborhood hospitals?
Neighborhood hospitals are gaining market share as more healthcare providers begin optimizing service lines to develop a patient-centric, value-based approach, satisfying consumers’ desire for convenience and ease of access. Additionally, as consumers are often drawn to urgent care or retail clinics, neighborhood hospitals have an opportunity to satisfy this group with more comprehensive care that can’t be met at the former, and without the perceived wait of a larger hospital. Neighborhood hospitals are a safer bet for both smaller providers and networks as the investment in real estate and operations is significantly lower, leading to lower risk in opening a new facility.
Hospital vs. Neighborhood Hospital.
Hospital operators may be concerned about the influx of their neighborhood counterpart and impact on vacant beds, but the reality is that consumer preferences create opportunities for both facilities to thrive in their respective markets. The key to neighborhood hospital success is knowing who their ideal patients are and understanding their market potential based on the propensity of their likely patients and the services lines most in demand. This makes the neighborhood hospital an opportunity for new providers looking for a market entry point and existing networks seeking to expand.
How Can You Identify Potential for Both Hospitals to Succeed in the Same Market?
Predictive analytics in healthcare will allow you to evaluate if a market can sustain both a hospital and a neighborhood hospital, start by going beyond demographics to truly understand the patients you serve using customer analytics. With healthcare-based customer analytics solutions, you can take a deep dive into the lifestyle characteristics and behaviors of your prospective patients. These insights will help your facility planning, no matter the size, evaluate market potential, optimize by service line, and enhance your marketing through healthcare predictive analytics modeling.
The differences in consumer preferences and options available when it comes to healthcare show that there is opportunity for both traditional hospitals and neighborhood hospitals to coexist in a single market without cannibalizing each other’s patients.
Potential competitor entering your market?
Thanks to predictive healthcare marketing, reaching prospective patients has never been easier. Using patient segmentation, you can improve marketing efforts by only targeting the patients in your market likely to visit your facility. Custom segmentation insights will also help you create messaging that resonates with each segment by service line, and you can deploy these messages through mediums your prospective patients are most likely to use. Save time and increase your marketing return on investment using analytics.
Stay Competitive with Analytics.
As competition increases and consumer preferences continue to evolve, leveraging analytics insights is key to growing your healthcare practice with confidence, no matter your size.
Learn how healthcare providers are using customer analytics.