Today’s healthcare marketplace is fraught with uncertainty about the rules and regulations that will govern the industry in the future. A Buxton healthcare client knew it had to seek the advice of a specialist when it received a major inflow of growth capital to fund expansion of the clinics it manages.
On the one hand, the chain of urgent care centers spread across Illinois, Oklahoma and Nebraska had the resources it needed to expand into new territories. On the other hand, trying to predict regulatory trends and the constantly shifting economy made it incredibly difficult to determine the smartest, safest and most promising way to expand.
Buxton was able to respond to the urgent care provider’s own urgent needs with a remedy of proven data and analytical tools – replacing uncertainty with confidence.
Help From a Specialist: Patient Analytics for Urgent Care Success
From the outset, the client embraced an analytical approach to growth. The company hired a former Walgreens executive as its new vice president of location strategy and patient insights.
They also used data and market analytics to:
• Clearly identify the company’s target patients and corporate clients – who they were and where they were located
• Determine underserved markets, as well as markets that were saturated or had niche needs that the client could fill
• Develop a model to determine what types of nearby businesses and healthcare facilities could be an asset or a hindrance to the brand’s operations
The Very Model of Good Health
Just as a diagnosis follows the discovery of symptoms, the urgent care provider needed a consistent method – a repeatable model – for evaluating potential new sites it had identified. This posed a particular challenge because a large portion of the company’s revenue came from occupational medicine, drug testing and other health services for corporate accounts. This meant the company had to model sites based on the corporate target market as well as on other target audiences.
As a result, a successful location model needed to find the intersections of such diverse criteria as:
- Proximity to residential areas with the demographics and psychographics of the company’s most promising patient profiles
- Access to factories, distribution centers and other targeted businesses to meet the needs of its corporate audience
- Ability to reach areas currently underserved by urgent care
Although the urgent care provider was able to rapidly implement the location model for its near-term needs, it could also fine-tune the model to meet the company’s ambitious growth plan over the next five years.
Energizing Existing Facilities
Site-selection modeling helped the client relieve the uncertainty that usually accompanies aggressive growth. At the same time, the company used Buxton’s analytics to maximize the value of its existing facilities by:
- Fine-tuning business-to-consumer mailing lists, so direct mail efforts can provide greater ROI
- Maximizing profitability by identifying leads for new corporate accounts near existing locations
- Pinpointing healthcare specialties that might be underserved in existing markets
Actionable Solutions: It’s the Best Medicine
When it comes to growing in a smart way, you need solid answers. Getting those kinds of answers starts with asking the right questions. Buxton helps hospitals, medical practices and other healthcare organizations ask the best questions to get the analytics they need to make the best decisions for growth.
Questions like:
- What medical specialties are underrepresented in the markets you serve?
- What healthcare procedures and which patient categories will see the most growth in your market in the next three to five years?
- How can you develop a more targeted and strategic approach to maximizing the impact of your healthcare facilities?
- How can you better serve a community’s changing demographics?
- How can you support your organization to decide which facilities to expand, close, repurpose or merge?
For any healthcare business interested in finding a smarter approach to growth, Buxton offers an unparalleled level of insight and expertise.
Contact us today to put the power of Buxton’s analytics to work for you.