Develop Service Line Strategies
Analyze the Competitive Landscape
Anticipate Future Patient Needs
Identify Sites To Capture Demand
Drive Loyalty Across the Patient Journey
Leverage Price Transparency Insights
Retain Patients in Your Network
Match Provider Supply to Demand
Acquire Commercial Patients
Capture Outpatient Demand
Target High-Value HCPs
Strengthen Provider Networks
We collect and organize the industry’s most comprehensive healthcare datasets.
See demand, supply and yield across the U.S. health economy
Validated Data for 2.9M Practitioners
Episodes of Care for 300M Patients
Negotiated Rates for Any Service at Any Location
Flexible solutions to fit your specific needs and workflow
Free resources to help health economy stakeholders use our products and data
Answer Key Questions in Seconds
Health Economy Survival Strategies
Custom Enterprise-Level Analyses
Product Guides and Feature Releases
Inform Data-Driven Strategies
How We Tackle Technical Problems
Data-Driven Benchmarking Tool
Strategic guidance and commentary from our CEO, Hal Andrews
Annual fact-based analysis of trends shaping the health economy
Original, data-driven research on trends shaping the health economy
Develop Service Line Strategies
Analyze the Competitive Landscape
Anticipate Future Patient Needs
Identify Sites To Capture Demand
Drive Loyalty Across the Patient Journey
Leverage Price Transparency Insights
Retain Patients in Your Network
Match Provider Supply to Demand
Acquire Commercial Patients
Capture Outpatient Demand
Target High-Value HCPs
Strengthen Provider Networks
We collect and organize the industry’s most comprehensive healthcare datasets.
See demand, supply and yield across the U.S. health economy
Validated Data for 2.9M Practitioners
Episodes of Care for 300M Patients
Negotiated Rates for Any Service at Any Location
Flexible solutions to fit your specific needs and workflow
Answer Key Questions in Seconds
Custom Enterprise-Level Analyses
Inform Data-Driven Strategies
Free resources to help health economy stakeholders use our products and data
Health Economy Survival Strategies
Product Guides and Feature Releases
How We Tackle Technical Problems
Data-Driven Benchmarking Tool
Strategic guidance and commentary from our CEO, Hal Andrews
Annual fact-based analysis of trends shaping the health economy
Original, data-driven research on trends shaping the health economy
The notion of benchmarking organizations against others has become a mainstay in healthcare, especially among hospitals and health systems. As an industry, we have become accustomed to leveraging quality scores and external rankings relative to any number of methodologies from U.S. News & World Report and The Leapfrog Group to CMS’ Star Ratings and Hospital Compare, to name a few.
In working with health systems across the country, I have been struck by the tendency for executives to routinely compare themselves to “peer systems”. In this case, peers were often defined by a dimension of system size or brand recognition (by national rankings). While there is tremendous value in learning from others, benchmarking for the purposes of decision-making related to future supply and demand, and subsequently consumer yield, requires a more data-driven approach.
As we know from previous research, the impact of intra-market variation alone is significant. With most large health systems operating in more than one market, often in disparate geographic areas, distinguishing between inter-market similarity and dissimilarity is a crucial element in benchmarking across markets.
As an illustrative example, we identified three pairs of similarly sized CBSAs (n=6) where HCA Healthcare, the largest health system in the U.S., has a market presence. HCA’s presence in 20 states provides ample opportunity to assess unique markets with varying levels of demand for healthcare services. We identified two of HCA’s larger markets (Jacksonville, FL and Salt Lake City, UT) with populations greater than 1M; two medium markets (Chattanooga, TN and Anchorage, AK) with similar populations between 350-750K; and two small markets (Bowling Green, KY and Idaho Falls, ID) with similar populations under 200K.
Comparing population size, demographics, and psychographics, these paired markets look quite similar, despite being geographically different (Figure 1). For example, Idaho Falls, ID and Bowling Green, KY have nearly identical population sizes, ratios of White to Non-White individuals, and average household income. Willful Endurers, individuals who live in the “here and now,” account for the primary consumer profile in all six markets that we analyzed. Yet, demand for healthcare services will be dissimilar given no two markets are exactly alike, regardless of how much they may appear to align.
Our previous research has concluded that the forecasted median year-over-year growth rate of major surgical service lines is not expected to exceed 2%. Our analysis of certain surgical service lines across these six markets reinforces this national trend in most scenarios, but also reflects a dissimilarity in demand growth across similar markets (Figure 2). For example, growth in demand for Heart/Vascular surgical services is projected to decrease in Jacksonville, FL but slightly increase in Salt Lake City, UT. Despite growth in demand decreasing nationally, the inter-market differences in each market’s projected future demand is unique to the patient population.
Irrespective of whether a health system seeks to benchmark itself amongst its own markets or across “peer” health systems, both require comparators that account for market dissimilarity. Ultimately, healthcare is local and visibility into inter-market dissimilarity will allow health systems to more accurately benchmark against not only themselves, but their competitors.
Thanks to Katie Patton and Stephen Tilstra for their research support.