Competition in Healthcare
Melissa Aranda
HCA/421
Professor Denton
September 17, 2012

In all industries, competition among businesses has long been encouraged as a mechanism to increase value for patients. In other words, competition ensures the provision of better products and services to satisfy the needs of customers (Glover & Rivers, 2009). In the health care industry, competition has an impact on many relational perspectives. There have been several studies examining the relationships between competition and quality of health care, competition and health care system costs, and competition and patient satisfaction. Some elements of competition in health care are price, quality, convenience, and superior products and …show more content…

Some pitfalls of competition in healthcare are the time and costs that it takes for healthcare organizations to compete against others. Some other common pitfalls are unexpected difficulties when expanding into new geographies, over-optimistic projections in patient numbers, revenues, and profitability, misjudging local income levels and ability to pay, and underestimating local competition. Another pitfall may be over investing in equipment. Competition has severely restricted collaboration among service providers. An alternative to competition would be collaboration between providers or fixed prices. Success is not achieved by ignoring your competition but rather by anticipating competitive issues and influences so you can always have a proactive plan and strategy for staying ahead of your competition. Competitive intelligence is a process of giving you insights into what might happen in the near future. Competitive intelligence pulls together data and information from a very large and strategic view, allowing you to predict or forecast what is going to happen. This in turn allows you to effectively strategize in relation to your competitive environment. Therefore, competitive intelligence allows you to remain competitive by improving your strategic decisions and this leads to better performance against your competitors (Evans, n.d.). The services provided by health care organizations and the choices patients have, have