Improve Your Competitive Strategy

Until the early 1990s competition in the healthcare industry was friendly and almost completely harmless. Healthcare firms struggled to meet demand, and most markets required multiple entities to keep up with patient needs. Since then, hospitals have become larger, more efficient, and capable of dominating entire communities. This has created a “survival of the fittest” mentality among healthcare organizations, where businesses must fight for every patient and experienced physician.

Alan M. Zuckerman’s Improve Your Competitive Strategy is a review of the six basic approaches used by healthcare firms to address the problem of fierce, rapidly growing competition. These strategies include: vertical integration, horizontal integration, diversification, niching, cost leadership, and differentiation. Zuckerman explains the advantages and pitfalls of each strategy, and examines case studies both inside and outside the healthcare industry.