Yesterday, we took a look at the 7 household types that account for 50% of the nation’s healthcare spending.  In the closing of that blog post we talked about why the customer analytic approach to healthcare planning is important.  The reason being that the approach ultimately gives an organization the ability to pinpoint where each of these specific mega-consumers of healthcare services live in relation to your network of facilities.

Let’s meet the Steadfast Conservative potential patient

Let’s take as an example one of the seven household types that we identified as mega-consumers of healthcare services: Experian Mosaic® household type Steadfast Conservatives.  The Steadfast Conservative has a mature middle-class blue collar background, they have quality healthcare insurance, they are 65 years of age and older, and they have ever-increasing needs for healthcare services.  If you think the Steadfast Conservative represents a rapidly growing segment of the nation’s population you would be correct.  And if you have come to the conclusion that the Steadfast Conservative might be important to a healthcare organization in terms of facility planning and marketing you would be right again.

Okay, so one household type does not a market make

We take into account hundreds and hundreds of variables when building forecasting and marketing models for our clients. But if you came to the quick conclusion that the Steadfast Conservative household might represent an opportunity to drive future performance for a given healthcare organization then wouldn’t you want to know more about them and specifically where they are?  Of course you would. Are you missing the mark? So following through on the idea that you would want to know where your more lucrative potential patients are in relation to your existing facilities we offer a compelling visual.  In the map below we have plotted the aforementioned Steadfast Conservative households as dots (the tool we are using here is called SCOUT).  The blue stars represent two healthcare facilities within a network.  The oddly shaped polygons are the drive-time service areas (markets) for each of these facilities.  If Steadfast Conservatives are an opportunity segment you can see where this network is missing the mark and may need to be optimized with infill facilities and marketing strategies.  Healthcare is a business.  In business hitting the mark makes you a hero.

A missed target: This provider’s facilities are not fully capturing concentrations of healthcare mega-consumers.