According to Trinity Community Hospital's evaluation, the market for the services the hospital offers is expected to grow over the course of the following five years. The hospital must devise a number of solutions to address the escalating demand for its oncology, cardiovascular, and orthopedic service lines. Orthopedic services are anticipated to increase by 46%, with outpatient treatments likely to increase by 350% and inpatient procedures expected to increase by 30%. On the other hand, the oncology service will have an increase of 34% in five years, with the current resources failing to meet the projected growth for the demand of these services. Similarly, over the next five years, about 15% of the population is depicted to be 65 years and above, thus increasing the expected cases for coronary heart disease with a margin of 21.6%. The growth will affect the cardiovascular service area, especially with the diagnostic procedures escalating with 22% and the angioplasties with 25.8%.
A2. International Healthcare Trends
One of the policies is the Affordable Care Act (ACA), signed in 2010, that aims at providing the uninsured patients with insurance covers. Trinity Hospital, therefore, is bound to re-evaluate their operations and adopt the requirements of the ACA to decrease reimbursements while increasing their competitiveness. Similarly, the ACA's value-based payment is another trend that affects the quality of services offered to the patients. The performance of Trinity hospital specifically in quality measures is a factor that is considered in the base rate increase in payments. As such, the amount and performance are tied, thus pushing the institution to focus on the quality of services and care for the patients they serve.The Readmission Reduction Program, based on the ACA, is a trend in the healthcare sector developed to reduce the costs incurred by patients due to readmissions in the hospital (Krumholz, Hsieh, Dreyer, Welsh, Desai, & Dharmarajan, 2016). For 30 days, Trinity Community Hospital must ensure the patients they treat are not readmitted. Otherwise, they will face lower reimbursement for the same. As such, it is imperative for Trinity Community Hospital to reduce the cases of readmission and alleviate the challenge of meeting penalties tied to readmission of patients.A3. Existing Products and Service Lines in healthcare
Currently, the hospital has a total of 20 rooms for their operations, one MRI Scanner, and two CT scanners. These are some of the resources which will be used as supplements for the process of integrating the service lines with the operations of the hospital. Moreover, the hospital has X-ray services that could also assist in the development of the new service lines. The utilization of the available products and service lines within the healthcare is essential as it will help to reduce the costs incurred in purchasing extra equipment for the service line delivery, thereby improving the financial stability of the institution. Similarly, the same will ensure time is not spent in buying the products since the only action required is to obtain the necessary resources and integrate the same with the existing products and service line.A4. Financial and Operating Data
In the course of integrating the new service lines, various financial aspects will have to be examined. The new orthopedic service line will require a significant amount of funding to ensure the service line operates efficiently. There is the choice constructing a 5000-square physical therapy center, building on site, or leasing the adjacent space. However, the fee for construction within the campus will be $100,000 less than purchasing the adjoining property. The radiology department will need to expand on a strategy to meet the rising need for their services. Moreover, the institution will be required to install an additional two MRI machines for a total of $3,000,000. The current reserved capital for the expansion is a total of $25,000,000.It is expected that hospital will serve a total of 6500 physical visits, amounting to a total of about $171,500. The projected gross charges for Trinity Community Hospital for the orthopedic surgical cases is expected to amount to $25,000 as the gross charges per treatment. Thus, the hospital is expected to gain financially from the increased demands.A5. Target Markets
The target market can be obtained through referrals of the physicians. In this regard, it is important to note that the quality of services offered by the physicians will determine the references made for the same. For the targeting of these physicians to be effective, Trinity Community Hospital should develop a program for giving patients discounts on the people they refer to the physicians. Through the provision of such incentives, it is mandatory that the hospital will receive more patients who are involved to them by some of the patients who have already been served by the hospital. The revenue derived for these patients is significantly higher than the total expenses incurred with the provision of the discount incentives.References
Krumholz, H. M., Hsieh, A., Dreyer, R. P., Welsh, J., Desai, N. R., & Dharmarajan, K. (2016). Trajectories of Risk for Specific Readmission Diagnoses after Hospitalization for Heart Failure, Acute Myocardial Infarction, or Pneumonia. Plos ONE, 11(10), 1-14. doi: 10.1371/journal.pone.0160492
