HLTH 4115 Week 3 Service Area Market Assessment Example

Market Assessment of the Northern Service Area: Who Lives There, How They Are Hurt, What Serves Them and Where the Gap Sits

Student Name

Walden University

HLTH 4115: Strategic Planning and Marketing in Healthcare

Instructor Name

Month Day, Year

Market Assessment of the Northern Service Area: Who Lives There, How They Are Hurt, What Serves Them and Where the Gap Sits

Purpose and Sources

This assessment profiles the service area for a proposed walk-in orthopedic injury clinic: five ZIP codes in the northern part of the county, where last week's scan found the fastest population growth. It is written as a briefing. In a real assessment, population and insurance figures would be drawn from Census Bureau survey tables published by ZIP Code Tabulation Area, injury visits from the hospital's own records and the state hospital discharge database, and competitor details from their public websites and posted hours. Because the hospital and county are a composite built for this course, the figures below are illustrative values of the size and shape such sources would show, and each table row names the source a reader would open to check it. Market analysis in health care starts with the people in an area and their needs before it counts competitors (Berkowitz, 2017).

Who Lives There

Table 1 summarizes the population of the five ZIP codes.

Table 1

Northern Service Area Population Profile (Illustrative Values, Composite County)

The area is younger than the county, mostly insured through employers and home to a large youth sports population, but nearly one resident in four is on Medicaid or uninsured.

How They Are Hurt

In the most recent year, the hospital's emergency department treated about 3,100 visits from the five ZIP codes with a primary diagnosis of a sprain, strain, dislocation or fracture (illustrative, from hospital records). About 60% were triaged at the two lowest acuity levels, meaning the patient was stable and needed few resources. Visits peaked on Saturday and Sunday afternoons and on weekday evenings between 5 and 9, which matches the timing of youth sports and after-work activity. Patients aged 5 to 17 made up about a third of the visits; residents 65 or older accounted for roughly one visit in eight, mostly after falls. Research on emergency department use has estimated that a meaningful share of visits, including many minor injuries, could be managed in urgent care settings (Weinick et al., 2010), and the low-acuity share here is consistent with that.

What Already Serves Them

The hospital's emergency department, about 20 minutes from the area, is open at all hours and accepts every patient, but low-acuity injuries wait longest there, a median of nearly three hours in the composite data, and the visit is the most expensive option for patients and payers.

The orthopedic group's walk-in clinic, about 15 minutes away near the highway, is open weekdays from 8 to 6 and Saturday mornings. It has X-ray and MRI on site and surgeons in the building. Its website lists the insurance it accepts, and two of the area's Medicaid managed care plans are not on the list.

Two urgent care centers run by a national chain sit inside the area and are open from 8 to 8 every day. They have X-ray and can splint, but have no orthopedic clinicians, so most fractures are referred onward for follow-up.

Orthopedic office appointments for new patients at the two local groups currently take about nine to fourteen days, based on the scheduling lines' quoted waits.

The Gap

Three gaps stand out. First, there is a gap in time: injuries peak on weekend afternoons and weekday evenings, when the only option with orthopedic expertise, the group's walk-in clinic, is closed. Second, there is a gap in capability: the urgent care centers are open at the right times but cannot provide definitive care, so a child with a forearm fracture is splinted and sent to wait more than a week for an orthopedic visit. Third, there is a gap in coverage: residents on two Medicaid plans have no orthopedic walk-in option and rely on the emergency department. A clinic that is open evenings and weekends, staffed with orthopedic clinicians and contracted with every Medicaid plan in the area would fill all three.

Size of the Opportunity

If the clinic drew a third of the low-acuity injury visits that now go to the emergency department from these ZIP codes, it would see about 620 visits a year from that source alone, roughly 12 a week. Patients now using the urgent care centers and the group's clinic would add to that, but the assessment has no reliable figure for their volume, so it does not estimate it. The figure is a floor, not a forecast, and it rests on two stated assumptions: the share of visits the clinic could capture and the stability of injury rates. Strategic planners are advised to state assumptions like these openly, so decision makers can test the estimate against their own judgment (Ginter et al., 2018).

What the Assessment Cannot Show

The assessment does not show how many injured residents use no care at all, how satisfied people are with the existing options or how the orthopedic group would respond to a new clinic. It also does not measure the injuries of older adults outside the emergency department, which may be larger than the visit data suggest. The next papers, a competitor analysis and a segmentation brief, take up the second and third questions. The first would require a household survey, which is beyond this project but worth noting for the hospital's next community health needs assessment.

Summary for Planners

The northern area is young, growing and mostly insured through employers, with a large youth sports population and a substantial minority on Medicaid. Its residents' injuries cluster in evenings and weekends, when the only orthopedic walk-in option is closed, and two Medicaid plans have no orthopedic walk-in option at all. A clinic designed to close those three gaps has a demonstrable floor of demand from the hospital's own emergency department and more beyond it.

References

Berkowitz, E. N. (2017). Essentials of health care marketing (4th ed.). Jones & Bartlett Learning.

Ginter, P. M., Duncan, W. J., & Swayne, L. E. (2018). The strategic management of health care organizations (8th ed.). Wiley.

Weinick, R. M., Burns, R. M., & Mehrotra, A. (2010). Many emergency department visits could be managed at urgent care centers and retail clinics. Health Affairs, 29(9), 1630-1636. https://doi.org/10.1377/hlthaff.2009.0748