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Assignment 1. In this assignment you will describe the business strategy of the firm you have selected. You will provide background information on the nature of the business, the size of the business, and its competitive environment.

Some firms will have a clearly articulated mission statement. For these firms, you will need to determine if what they preach is consistent with what they practice. Other firms may have no concrete idea of their business strategy. You will need to discern their business strategy from how they operate as a company.

In either case, your assignment is to build a case to conclude whether their current practices are innovative (prospectors), focus on costs (defenders), have elements of both (analyzers), or complete lack a strategy (reactors). The top half of Exhibit 3 in the Miles and Snow reading provides an outline of the characteristics of the various business strategies. You should provide specific examples to strengthen your case and draw a clear conclusion at the end of the paper. The body of the paper should be 2-3 single spaced pages of 12 characters per square inch. (Please comply with the spirit of this request)

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Background Information

CHRISTUS Health is an international, not-for-profit health system that encompasses over 60 hospitals and long-term care facilities, 350 clinics and outpatient centers, and many other health ministries and ventures. CHRISTUS Health is mainly run in Louisiana and Texas, where its hospitals are, but also has facilities in Arkansas, Georgia, Iowa, Missouri, and New Mexico, and in six states in Mexico and one in Chile. CHRISTUS Health is a large organization that employs 45,000 associates and more than 15,000 physicians and other medical staff that provide medical care to patients. It is a Catholic, faith-based health system, that exist to serve others through the healing presence of Jesus Christ.

 

CHRISTUS Health prides itself on having ethical business practices, meaning that it is committed to maintaining honest business practices and has processes in place to avoid conflict. CHRISTUS recognizes a patient’s right to health care treatments and/or services and is willing to provide these health care treatments and/or services as long as it is in agreement with the Catholic moral tradition. In addition, CHRISTUS strives to provide a safe and hazard-free environment to its associates and patients that adheres to national standards and established federal, state, and local regulations. The company is also careful to safeguard sensitive information provided by its patients, physicians, payors and others engaged in business to protect the confidentiality of all CHRISTUS information. CHRISTUS is able to do this by accurately maintaining the data, records, and reports of all patients within the organization. Lastly, CHRISTUS Health has procedures and policies put in place to aid accurate cost report completion that they then submit to the appropriate governmental agency.

 

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As a Catholic, not-for-profit healthcare ministry, CHRISTUS Health’s mission statement is to extend the healing ministry of Jesus Christ. CHRISTUS fulfills this mission through the services its associates provides through in hospitals, ambulatory care centers, and clinics to populations across the southern United States, Mexico, Chile, and Colombia. CHRISTUS has identified its three most important strategic initiatives in its Compass 2020 vision. The first of these strategic initiatives is clinical integration, which encompasses physician alignment, evidence-based practices for care, the CHRISTUS Health Plan, and population health management. The second strategic initiative is asset growth, which means increasing efficiency of current assets as well as continuing to grow assets in the US and internationally through expansion. The final strategic initiative is culture with a strong focus on diversity and inclusion.

 

Because of the dynamic nature of the healthcare environment in the United States, CHRISTUS has a business strategy that resembles that of the analyzer strategy. As a larger, multinational organization, CHRISTUS is a matrixed organization that is broken up into several defined regions that are made up of markets. Today CHRISTUS has a Northeast Texas region, a Southeast Texas Region, a South Texas Region, a New Mexico Region, a Louisiana Region, and an International Region. Within each region, there are markets; for example, the South Texas Region is comprised of the CHRISTUS Santa Rosa Market in San Antonio and the CHRISTUS Spohn Market in Corpus Christi. Each region and market have their own different nuances and competitive environments that necessitate the analyzer business strategy, which exhibits aspects of both the defender and innovator. CHRISTUS is currently focused on labor management across the organization, which could be considered a defender strategy. That said, CHRISTUS is also looking at new models of care and ways to further integrate the healthcare system in order to better provide services to populations, and this is more in line with the innovator strategy. Through maintaining a close eye on the competition and changing market dynamics, CHRISTUS succeeds as an analyzer.