Summary
GBMC HealthCare System received the Baldrige National Quality Award in the healthcare sector for its superior service and achievements combined with success in the market. Greater Baltimore Medical Center (GBMC) is located in Baltimore, Maryland, and provides high-quality care for patients since 1965 (GBMC, 2021). The facility’s campuses and medical professionals handle more than 23,000 admissions and over 52,000 emergency room visits every year and offer various Medicare and Medicaid assistance for the patients (GBMC, 2021). The target market for GBMC’s products is Baltimore citizens, but the hospital is open to providing services for every person who needs primary, elderly, post-acute, and specialty care or advanced diseases’ diagnosis and treatment.
GBMC’s financial management helps the facility thrive and systematically adds multiple inpatient and outpatient practices. The medical center is rich in resources, with net patient revenue of $581 million and a workforce of 4,388 employees and 1,140 volunteers (Baldrige Performance Excellence Program [BPEP], 2021). The hospital’s authority as a high-quality services provider and stable positions in the local healthcare sector is the profound foundation to apply strategies for expanding to broader markets and increasing competitiveness.
GBMC’s Strategic Planning
Strategic planning helps GBMC maintain steady value growth, decrease financial risks, and plan development for the services and employees. BPEP (2021) states that the center utilizes “a four-phase, nine-step Strategic Planning Process (SPP) ensures that strategic objectives are aligned with GBMC’s Four Aims: Better Health, Better Care, Least Waste, More Joy.” The medical facilities must build a solid strategic vision that would help in decision-making and establish future expanse principles or improvement principles.
GBMC’s “Better Health, Better Care, Least Waste, More Joy” mission statement is a bright, practical example that reflects the company’s values and includes the hospital services market. Moreover, the center’s executives are involved in all processes of the facility, they visit campuses and talk to doctors, nurses, and patients (GBMC, 2021). Such active leaders’ participation and systematic evaluation allow the managers to create realistic functional-area and operating strategies to maintain compliance with the values (Thompson et al., 2020). Strategic planning helped GBMC identify the changes in primary care and emergency departments, timely discover the demand for improving at-home outpatient rehabilitative services and hold the leading positions in the core market (BPEP, 2021). The medical center tracks the performance by analyzing the accordance to the Four Aims and compares the changes during financial and workforce planning procedures.
GBMC’s Expansion to The International Market
GBMC represents the hospitals and outpatient care centers segment, therefore its expansion opportunities must be viewed following its standards. The demand for healthcare facilities increases due to the growing rates of lifestyle diseases, demand in the workforce, and the market’s improvement in developing countries (Data Bridge Market Research, 2020). Based on the center’s values, expansion approaches are setting a grant-funded foundation for nursing professionals’ education, participating in global disease prevention programs, or opening branch facilities in emerging countries. Expansion to the international hospital and outpatient centers market is beneficial for GBMC due to employment, technology, and customer sector opportunities. Medical centers will gain access to low-cost production of crucial instruments, widen the services’ range, exploit the employees’ competencies, and improve the work quality by comparing them to high international standards.
The Hospitals and Outpatient Care Centers International Market
The healthcare market is highly fragmented, and one facility or company can find its customers in multiple local or worldwide markets. The hospitals and outpatient care centers market increased its global value during the pandemic in 2020 and got through the standards’ changes based on the fighting against COVID-19 experience (Data Bridge Market Research, 2020). Hospital or outpatient care centers can dramatically improve their services’ quality by entering the international market due to the higher standards. However, a facility should build its strategies based on the fundamental values to avoid mistakes such as serious policy or billing systems changes or damaging their authority at the local level (Gaynor et al., 2017). Based on the diamond of competitive advantage, conditions, strategies, and supporting industries’ development significantly vary in different countries for the hospital or outpatient care centers’ market (Thopmson et al., 2020). However, the emerging regions provide a field to compete in delivering international healthcare services, and GBMC can enter the market by expanding to such places.
The market’s competitive analysis reveals that healthcare facilities’ demand increased and lowered the entry barrier for many companies worldwide. GBMC complies with the key success factors of the market because it has a trusted history, sustainable financial strategy, numerous workforce, and addresses environmental issues. Based on the center’s practices and values, the transnational approach to international strategy would be the most appropriate (Thopmson et al., 2020). GBMC must maintain high-quality services on local campuses, and the appearance of the international segment will profoundly impact the coordination’s flexibility. However, GBMC must evaluate the risks of the formation of the conflicting goal in order to maintain the high quality of the services at old and new locations.
GBMC would need to make several cross-border strategic moves to expand to the international market properly. Firstly, the centers will need to evaluate the economic and practical value of developing their services in a specific location (Thopmson et al., 2020). Secondly, medical facilities can try to improve the healthcare situation in the chosen region by promoting healthy lifestyles and prevention measures for the locals. Lastly, GBMC must establish financial policies and develop a lower-cost basis for their services in the developing countries they are about to enter. It would help GBMC get new customers and increase competitiveness (Thopmson et al., 2020). Moreover, the healthcare facilities’ executives need to gain support from the United States and the local governments to gain insurance and decrease the risks.
GBMC’s expansion to the international hospitals and outpatient care centers market can be viewed as an opportunity to increase diversification. Medical centers can enter new industries or initiate actions to boost the combined performance of all facilities to diversify the business strategy (Thopmson et al., 2020). For example, GBMC can establish laboratories for medical testing or study the new location’s healthcare environment. In the international market, expansion via diversification can help the medical centers get shareholders, receive grants and broaden the opportunities of sharing their values (Unger et al., 2020). The healthcare industry is attractive today due to the high demand for its services after the pandemic, therefore the projects or innovative decisions are a significant opportunity for GBMC to increase its value.
The business lineup can be diversified by acquiring an existing business, which can help GBMC enter another country’s market if there is a suitable facility or company that would comply with the values. Private hospitals, if considered as separate companies, would be a profound example of the process in the health care facilities industry. Moreover, setting up educational programs in GBMC can cause the internal development necessary for expansion (Thopmson et al., 2020). These diversification strategies reveal that medical centers’ business is related because they possess a competitively valuable cross-business value chain. The recommendations to make the diversification profitable for GBMC are making acquisitions to establish their positions in new locations, identifying attractive industries like nursing education or laboratory services, and developing in them.
SMART Goals for GBMC To Enter International Market
Based on the recommendations for GBMC to achieve diversification, the first goal is to search for at least three acquisition candidates in the developing countries within the next two quarters to make at least one merging by the end of the fiscal year 2021. The second is to develop the international benchmarks of healthcare facilities’ quality and include them in the next strategic planning session. The third goal is to increase the inpatient market share by at least 2 percent by the end of the current fiscal year.
Business Letter for The Strategic Framework
Dear GBMC Executives,
The profound healthcare services that GBMC provides for Baltimore citizens for more than 50 years can be expanded to the international level. The demand for high-quality facilities increased worldwide after the pandemic, and the hospitals market is convenient to enter. The research revealed that the competitiveness is low due to the significant percentage of healthcare enterprises belonging to the government. GBMC can join the international hospitals and outpatient care market within the next fiscal year without harming Baltimore’s headquarter facilities’ performance. The developed recommendations and SMART goals provide a more detailed approach for impacting the global emerging healthcare issues.
References
Baldrige Performance Excellence Program. (2021). GBMC Healthcare system. National Institute of Standards and Technology. Web.
Data Bridge Market Research. (2020). Global hospitals and outpatient care centers market – Industry trends and forecast to 2027. Web.
Gaynor, M., Mostashari, F., & Ginsburg, P. B. (2017). Making health care markets work: competition policy for health care. Jama, 317(13), 1313-1314. Web.
Greater Baltimore Medical Center. (2021). About GBMC healthcare. Web.
Thompson, A., Peteraf, M., Gamble, J., Strickland, A. (2020). Crafting & executing strategy, the quest for competitive advantage, 22e, McGraw-Hill Education.
Unger, J. P., Morales, I., & De Paepe, P. (2020). Objectives, methods, and results in critical health systems and policy research: evaluating the healthcare market. BMC Health Services Research, 20(2), 1-13. Web.