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A Truer Estimate of Your Market Share

What if...you removed your own employees' utilization from the numerator in your market share calculations?

Health care providers track market share as obsessively as any other industry I know of. Boardrooms ring with 'Huzzahs' whenever quarterly results show even the smallest uptick.

At the same time, many providers heavily incent their workforce's use of their own facilities, offering lower deductibles, co-pays or other incentives to keep it all in the family, so to speak. It makes sense from an HR perspective. You're essentially paying variable cost for your health plan's utilization instead of some multiple at the hospital down the road.

Yes, "captive arrangements" are nice, and the more you can devise with external customers, the larger and more stable is your revenue base. But don't kid yourself. Your employee health plan's spending is not really business you competed for and won. The fact that your employees choose you under financial duress isn't the same as building competitive advantage among consumers over which you have far less control.

Sure, it may only change the numbers a percentage or two. But when grown men veritably weep over changes measured in hundredths of a percentage point, it makes sense to get the picture right. You may not be quite the rockstar hospital you think you are.

Learning that would be a shame, but if it's true your customers already know it. Your competitors probably do too. That leaves you bringing up the rear in the learning category.


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