The Challenge
For years, a leading health system had taken a bottoms-up approach to identifying market development opportunities. This approach relied on traditional forms of market intelligence, such as broker relationships, insights from staff in the field, and news reports on developments in the pipeline. Resources to help inform expansion decisions were also siloed across various parts of the company.
A C-suite call to accelerate development and create an enterprise level view of where new facilities should be developed prompted the strategy team to re-evaluate the legacy approach. While it was effective in the past, strategy team leaders realized they needed a more data-driven approach to align the organization around a common view of market development opportunity.
Choosing Buxton
When the strategy team began evaluating options to strengthen the organization’s market planning resources, they sought more than just disparate real estate tools or data platforms. They wanted a partner with healthcare expertise, robust analytics, and an interface that leaders and field teams alike could adopt easily. Buxton stood out for its established healthcare vertical, deep healthcare data, and user-friendly platform.
One executive put it simply: Buxton offered the most well-rounded solution on the market.
A New Approach to Market Development
Buxton analyzed the organization’s consumers to create profiles of the typical patient. The profiles in turn drove site forecasting models and a standardized organization-wide analysis of expansion opportunities that helped the team to determine which markets to develop and how many locations each market could support. The results were incorporated in the Buxton Platform for easy access and ongoing analysis.
With Buxton, the team was able to map opportunities across markets, share forecasts with field leaders, and challenge assumptions. In many cases, the data validated previous real estate decisions. In others, it pointed to adjustments, such as moving a site in their pipeline a few miles closer to the neighborhoods where target patients lived. Having a neutral, unbiased way to pressure test sites has been helpful in conversations with execution teams.
The strategy team also points to the efficiency gains from having a top-down analysis in one centralized platform. They appreciate being able to give field teams direction on where to look for expansion opportunities and providing field teams with access to the same tools and data visualizations. They also appreciate not having to go to different data sources or platforms to find answers.
Smarter Marketing Strategies
The marketing team quickly saw the benefit as well. In the past, campaigns were broad and unfocused. By leveraging Buxton’s patient profiling and segmentation insights, marketing leaders can refine their approach: identifying the consumer segments most likely to use specific service lines and tailoring outreach accordingly.
The marketing team is piloting a significant project with Buxton. The goal? More efficient spend, smarter targeting, and a unified strategy to drive visits to each facility. By basing both strategy and marketing on the same patient definitions, the organization can ensure faster facility ramp-up and stronger ROI.
Expanding Across Teams
Other departments have begun to embrace the platform, too. Finance teams use Buxton to inform pro formas and support capital planning. Real estate leaders are exploring how it can guide decisions about existing land investments. Even senior executives log in directly, running their own scenarios to validate opportunities before giving the green light.
By working within a common platform, teams benefit from shared visibility and consistent visuals, making business cases easier to build and decisions faster to make.
Early Results
- Smarter decisions – Expansion plans are now driven by deeper data and insights.
- Tighter alignment – Teams across strategy, real estate, marketing, and finance are working from a single source of truth.
- Greater efficiency – Time once spent stitching together data from multiple sources is now freed for analysis and action.
As one leader summarized: “Buxton helps us make better decisions faster.”
Looking Ahead
While it will take time for the full impact to be realized, the healthcare system is already seeing the cultural shift that comes from replacing instinct with insight. Buxton has helped to align teams around a data-driven roadmap for expansion, streamline collaboration, and set the stage for smarter expansion in the years ahead.