Business parameters for five potential hospital services being considered for implementation. The service lines were: Sleep Center, Vascular Surgery, Stroke Center, ENT and Home Health Care. For each service the final report covered: incidence of related disorders, medical procedures and therapies, use rates, standards and accreditation, typical levels of capital investment and financial returns, and potential local competitors.
A quick-turnaround research project summarizing the key characteristics of four behavioral health hospitals to demonstrate the current range of organizational approaches for providing this service. Each profile included information about the hospital's: mission, organization & affiliations, services, utilization, financial performance, and key attributes.
Ten year historical outline of mergers, acquisitions, and closings of hospitals within a major metropolitan area. Developed for a senior hospital executive relocating to this market, it proved to be a useful reference for others as well.
Effectiveness of Broad School-Based Screening for Scoliosis in Adolescents. Resulted in major suburban school system terminating their program.
Review of Current Methodologies for Estimating Physician Requirements.
Review of Integration Strategies of Nine Regional Health Care Systems.
Gender Discrimination in the Delivery of Cardiac Care Services.
Trends in Emergency Remediation and Other Cleanup Activities at Superfund Sites.
Assessment of the markets of two suburban/rural hospitals. Performed for a large university hospital as part of a pre-merger analysis.
In-depth analysis of the service area and regions surrounding a New England hospital. Included a new approach for defining the hospital's market areas to facilitate future strategic growth and affiliation discussions.
Data-rich assessment of suburban hospital's markets including trends and market shares by service line. Performed as part of a major strategic planning effort.
We are extremely adept at working with detailed patient origin data (including those files that are way too big to fit into an Excel spreadsheet) and in combining these data with population information to provide a comprehensive look at a hospital's market/service area. We are familiar with the data sets provided by many of the aggregators across the U.S., know where to look and who to ask for such information in most states, and also maintain our own national database of patient origin data from the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS).
Tabular and graphical presentations of a wide range of demographic variables (e.g., population, income, education) by age, gender, race/ethnicity, household size and other parameters for Census year 2000, the current year, and five year projections. Demographic data are available for geographies ranging from the full U.S. down to block groups and for just about everything in between (e.g., counties, zip codes, census tracts). We also adjust and aggregate data for custom geographic and service areas.
Calculation of population- and distance-weighted centroids for market areas. Particularly useful in analyzing potential new facility/site locations
Detailed internal assessment of suburban hospital's services and utilization. Performed as part of a major strategic planning effort.
Summary of strengths and weaknesses of eight service lines for mid-size urban hospital facing financial challenges. Covered utilization data, market shares and key competitors, medical staff, relevance to mission, and financial contribution. Resulted in the organization deciding to withdraw from two service lines and expand three others.
Responsibility Charting exercise to streamline decision-making process for joint ventures being pursued by a consortium of four health care organizations. Responsibility charting is a technique that maps specific tasks vs. managers, and graphically displays authorities and responsibilities. In this instance it was performed as part of a two-day planning retreat; it often is very effective at identifying "bottlenecks" that prevent organizations from getting the job done efficiently.
Detailed business plan for newly integrated Women's and Children's Service Line of hospital facing challenges of increasingly competitive market and severe erosion of physician loyalty. View one-page topic outline. Volumes for this service, which had been flat, increased by more than 30% in the four years following development of this business plan.
Business concept plan for a new venture involving the creation of an independent institute focusing on research and treatment of chronic liver disease. View one-page topic outline. The plan was an early step in seeking an affiliation with a major U.S. university as well as private funding for the project.
Review of internally-developed draft business plan to identify critical assumptions and possible weaknesses in the analysis and the proposed strategy.
Easy-to-use profile software for acute care hospitals. Including pre-formatted data request and standardized report output, it contained all necessary formulas and exhibits, automatically produced summary tables, and eliminated the need for any duplicate entries, thus greatly reducing the potential for errors. View one-page topic outline. This linked-spreadsheet tool has been used many times by a top health care strategy consulting firm.
Customized, detailed analyses of National Hospital Discharge Survey (NHDS) data. We maintain several years of the raw data sets that allow us to make combinations and perform detailed analyses beyond what is reported each year by the National Center for Health Statistics NCHS). View a one-page example. One of the most useful of these has been an Excel spreadsheet summarizing the NHDS data (number of patients, patient days, ALOS, use rate) by DRG, by age group -- statistics not published by NCHS.
Each year we obtain Medicare inpatient origin data (by hospital by zip code) for the entire country directly from the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services. With this, we can provide a quick look at a hospital's approximate service area and market shares. Great for preparing proposals or for other times when you don't have detailed patient origin data available.
Design and application of the "SuperTree" decision tree model
for developing and/or evaluating settlement offers for cleanup expenditures at Superfund hazardous waste sites. Approach included: Accounting of costs; Win-loss probabilities for key legal issues; Financial implications of decisions; and Net present value of costs, settlements and awards. Ms. DeSmidt was the first to apply a decision tree analysis to expedite resolution of these cases. SuperTree has been used extensively by the Environmental Protection Agency and potentially responsible parties.
Spreadsheet-based software used to compare and rank potential hospital affiliation/merger partners. Using publicly available data and importance weightings customized for each client, the analysis produced relative scores for all candidate hospitals in four categories and a single ranked list of potential partners. This model was used at the senior executive and board level for multiple consulting engagements.
Color maps are an excellent way to display geographical information including market areas, local demographics, sales by region and customers by zip code. (Click here for more information about mapping zip codes.) Our maps are custom designed to meet our clients' specific needs. We often use them in our market assessments, and also offer custom maps as a separate product. We can prepare multiple versions to fit all of your presentation requirements, or deliver a basic map that you can modify yourself and use directly in your documents. Best of all, you don't need to buy and learn some esoteric mapping software: we deliver files formatted for use in Microsoft PowerPoint. View five pages of sample maps. (Stand-alone map prices start at $140.)
