SAHS ANALYSIS 1
10-4 Course Project: Shady Acre Health Systems Analysis
Southern New Hampshire University
HRM 630
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Shady Acres Healthcare System Analysis
Marketing
Shady Acres Healthcare System (SAHS), which was developed in early 1970’s, has a
wonderful reputation amongst the individuals it serves, as well as high employee satisfaction
rates. However, SAHS has suffered from a lack of marketing efforts, which has led to minimal
community awareness in regard to its two assisted living facilities, which today are only
operating under a small profit. SAHS’s home health care and its hospice facility are showing
decreases in occupancy, which threatens the already small profit margin the assisted living
facilities are leveraging to keep the lights on.
Not formulating a strong market strategy is resulting in SAHS failing to attract enough
clientele because they’re simply unaware of the assisted living services that SAHS has to offer.
Even if SAHS does engage in some marketing, the lack of a strategic marketing plan leads to
unorganized and unmonitored promotional efforts that may be costing money without actually
being effective. A strategic marketing plan involves assessing the market, determining your
target audience, and selecting the most appropriate avenues to use for promoting your services.
SAHS must follow this marketing roadmap, then track which promotional efforts are generating
the highest amount of business (McQuerrey, 2020). This involves SAHS implementing formal
systems and methodology to analyze where its clientele is coming from; by doing so, SAHS can
conclude which marketing avenues are effective for its target audience and which ones should be
retired. Without methods for clientele tracing in place, SAHS may be investing in advertising
that isn’t generating business, while underutilizing other promotional avenues from which the
institution is bringing in the most customers. Once a formal marketing assessment is completed,
SAHS can more effectively time ad campaigns, purchase bulk advertising in an effort to reduce
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costs, and better saturate the market. Ultimately, a strong marketing strategy will result in higher
levels of brand awareness and recognition, consistent marketing efforts, improved customer
experience, and customer loyalty (Business Strategy, 2020).
Using a SMART framework will allow SAHS to create goals that are strategically
planned, concise, and trackable. SMART stands for Specific, Measurable, Achievable, Relevant,
and Time-based. Being as specific as possible allows the organization to narrow its goal down
enough to clearly understand the necessary steps to achieve success. Goals must be measurable
so that progress can be gauged at routine intervals; by setting milestones, SAHS will have the
opportunity to constantly re-evaluate and modify their course of action, when necessary. Setting
achievable goals within reasonable timelines is also important, as it keeps the team motivated.
Before driving towards a goal, SAHS must determine whether the goal is realistically achievable
or if preliminary action must be taken beforehand in order to prepare for the mission. SAHS
marketing goals should also be relevant, meaning they align with the company’s values and
long-term goals. If upon deeper analysis it’s determined that the goal doesn’t contribute toward
grander, long-term goals, then the company should rethink why it’s important and if it should be
pursued or not. Goals must also be time-based, which provides motivation and allows for
prioritization. If time-based goals aren’t being met within the designated timeframe, the goal
may have been unrealistic or road-blocked by certain obstacles. It’s critical to understand why a
goal wasn’t met so the experience can lead to improved strategic planning in the future (Indeed,
2021). b
Healthcare marketing teams must consider the 5 P’s while strategizing how to reach
external stakeholders: Patients, Physicians, Professional Healthcare Administrators, Payers, and
Policy Makers. Patients are more empowered today than they have been in the past, meaning
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marketing strategies must deliver concise, clear messaging via an avenue that will be sure to
reach patients. Patients have more access to information and more discretion regarding plans,
contributions, medications, and specific health care providers. Healthcare marketers need to
chop through the noise to deliver easily understood messages (Mycek, 2015). Social media
platforms are a powerful tool to reach patients in 2022, as the majority of Americans have some
form of social media, whether it be Twitter, Instagram, Facebook, etc. In fact, 42% of consumers
seek health-related reviews on social media before selecting a practice or physician (PatientPop,
2019). Marketers can take advantage of surveys, market research, patient analytics, and
automated software to extract meaningful insights about patients’ medical concerns and
healthcare information they’re most interested in, which can then be used to create ads targeted
toward target populations (Invade, 2022). Ethical considerations must be prioritized when
advertising to patients; it’s important that patients are not misled to become victims of false
advertising. With patients being empowered to make their own medical decisions, they must be
ethically guided via marketing strategies that are geared towards providing them with the most
accurate and relevant information.
To market to physicians, social media can be utilized, as well as regular posts of high-
quality content on the SAHS blog or website. New products and services can be promoted and
physician/practice research involvement can be shared, establishing the SAHS team as thought
leaders in the medical space. This also leads to guest posting opportunities on other health care
sites, increasing chances for speaking engagements and invitations to panel discussions, which
will all increase SAHS brand awareness. Guest posting allows SAHS physicians to penetrate
new audiences and onboard new patients (PatientPOP, 2019). Professional health care
administrators think about products and services from an overall patient experience perspective;
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therefore, in order to penetrate the healthcare administrator space, the overall patient experience
has to be marketed effectively. To do this, SAHS can develop and promote customer-friendly
scheduling platforms and payment procedures., fast service, comfortable waiting areas, clinic
amenities, private rooms, etc. (Invideo, 2022). The more comfortable, time-efficient, automated
and user-friendly the customer experience is, the more traction it will gain amongst healthcare
administrators
Policy Makers in the health care setting are those who determine how health care is
provided to people. For example, one of the biggest policy makers in the health care industry is
the World Health Organization (WHO), whose marketing team provided extensive videos, social
media posts, blogs, and illustrations that could be shared during the COVID-19 pandemic. Using
data captured by the experiences of the other external stakeholders, such as patients, providers
and payors, allows for policy makers to construct population-level metrics that can be used to
inform health economic policies. Therefore it’s important for SAHS to make it clear and obvious
on their online platforms what services are being delivered (how, where, and by whom), who is
eligible for them, how they’re paid for, are they well-delivered, are they accessible, and are the
needs of marginalized populations adequately served? This way the information regarding
SAHS products, services, and the populations they serve can be easily identified by policy
makers.
Payors are responsible for operationalizing the financial components of the policy
framework, enrolling patients as beneficiaries and procuring health care services from providers
on behalf of their patient beneficiaries. Payors are also responsible for ensuring the financial
stability of the care program and reporting to policy makers. Payors and providers have a
customer/supplier relationship, and payors have a supplier/customer relationship with their
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patient beneficiaries. In order to achieve sustainability, payors strive to minimize the cost of
funding their portfolio of services. Therefore, to market to them effectively, SAHS should
advertise the medical necessity of the services they offer, as well as market competitive pricing
in comparison to other health care organizations offering the same products and services
(PressBooks, 2021).
Without a strategic, organized marketing strategy, SAHS will continue to observe
suboptimal clientele volume and be at risk of closure. The good news is that SAHS already has
an excellent reputation in the community, so it just needs to focus on reaching more people and
targeting the appropriate audience to increase the success rate of its assisted living facilities.
Electronic Health Record
A serious issue that faces Shady Acres Healthcare System is the lack of integration of
electronic health record (EHR) system. Even though the entity came into existence during the
1970s, it has not been able to be at par with its competitors that offer health care solutions in the
community (Lewis et al., 2012). Unlike its competitors, it has not integrated technology into its
processes and activities which has restricted its quality of performance and its ability to deliver
better quality of services to its users.
In the digitalized era technology is considered to be an integral component of health care
system. In fact, it has the potential to enhance the quality of service that is delivered to the end-
users. However, because of the lack of the adoption of technological elements such as EHR, the
facility has not been able to meet the evolving health needs of the community members (Lewis et
al., 2012). The adoption of EHR would help SAHS to have a better degree of control over patient
records and make optimum use of its resources. But due to the absence of an electronic health
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record system, Shady Acres Healthcare System follows manual processes to manage data which
restricts its level of efficiency while delivering health care services.
Financial Concerns
SAHS is in an extremely poor area with an increasing number of individuals who are
unemployed and thus without health insurance. The clinics have been using a sliding fee discount
program scale. The sliding fee scale is a model for payments which is administered to patients
who can’t afford care to begin with. SAHS needs to take advantage of government programs
such as Medicare, Medicaid, or Children’s Health Insurance Program (CHIP). Individuals and/or
families that have low income or unemployed can quality for either free or low-cost coverage
(healthcare.gov).
The Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS) developed a program called
Hospital Value-Based Purchasing (VBP). The program “rewards acute care hospitals with
incentive payments for the quality of care they provide.” The VBP program was designed to
improve the overall quality of care for patients and ensure patients are receiving the best possible
experience (cms.gov). In fiscal year (FY) 2020 the total incentive payments for VBP was $1.9
billion. There are approximately 2,700 hospitals that quality across the country that are eligible
for the incentive payments (fact sheet cms). The three key values of this program are to improve
the quality, efficiency, and patient care experience.
SAHS will need to follow these recommendations to be eligible for the VBP payment
incentives and thus improve their net operating income. First, SAHS will need to revamp their
EHR to help reduce avoidable human errors that result in patient harm. Second, establish
evidence-based standards and protocols to ensure the best outcome for Medicare patients. Third,
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is increase the transparency of care quality for both consumers and clinicians. Fourth, provide
higher-quality care at a lower cost to Medicare (cms.gov). b
Not-For-Profit & Growth Possibilities
One of the great things that Shady Acres Healthcare Systems (SAHS) has going for it is
that it is a not-for-profit organization. Not-for-profit organizations and especially healthcare
systems are afforded many tax incentives and tax breaks when compared to for-profit
organizations and healthcare systems. Not-for-profit healthcare systems are blessed with not
having to pay federal corporate income taxes, state income taxes, and depending on where they
are located their location can make them exempt from having to pay local property taxes. By
having the designation as a not-for-profit organization not only does they save them on having to
pay taxes, but this also allows the money that would be spent on taxes to be to be reinvested and
reorganized into the organization to help make improvements and help reshape the organization
to address the many community and organizational needs (Carevoyance, 2019). Not-for-profit
hospitals also can write off bad debts they have gained and to help write care under the provisions
of charity care. This designation can be very helpful and beneficial to SAHS in helping to turn
the page and address the growing needs or the organization and the community.
Under the Affordable Care Act (ACA) not-for-profit healthcare systems need to conduct
a community needs assessment every three years and develop a strategy plan on how to address
and how to meet the needs found in the community assessment (Carevoyance, 2019). With the
dynamics of city neighborhoods changing daily, the need for change can provide SAHS with the
assessment tools needed to address and meet the needs of the new community springing up in
their backyard and help in either improving or expanding existing services to address the new
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needs. With the growing population within SAHS footprint, there is the ability to expand its
pharmacy to a mail-order pharmacy and expand the laboratory as it is not being used at its full
strength. Since Coronavirus (COVID) has hit the United States, the need for mail-order
pharmaceuticals has grown. Today the mail-order pharmacies make up over 37 percent of the
market (Elizabeth Seeley, 2021). With SAHS own laboratory only being used at 33 percent of its
capacity, there is a strong need to expand its usage is very critical in helping to make sure SAHS
is profitable. With establishing an electronic health record (EHR) to help bring SAHS to the
modern world will be very critical to help expand the laboratory. There is also room to offer new
contracts to the federal government in terms of COVID testing and many other services and other
companies can benefit from basic laboratory services, drug, and health related exams to offer
greater services with an evolving population dynamic.
Conclusion
There is plenty of considerable room for growth for SAHS, and by addressing the issues
addressed and presented above, SAHS can be in a better situation moving forward towards the
future then how they are in their current state. With the growth and expansion of the current area
that SAHS services as a healthcare provider, opens the door for new technology and growth.
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