Demographics, strategic planning, and marketing: a low budget approach

Health care organizations with constrained planning budgets can access data sources which will be of great assistance in strategic and market analysis. The data described in this article can be obtained for $250 or less. For segmenting the market even further, down to the International Classification of Disease (ICD)-9 Code Level, the National Center for Health Statistics of the Department of Health and Human Services publishes an annual data book which indicates the use rates for every ICD-9 Code. This extremely valuable data source is all less than $10. Managers can take inexpensive data from the Census and from HHS and proceed to determine major opportunities and challenges facing their institutions. The same data then serve as the basis for planning about how to meet those challenges or take advantage of those opportunities. Finally, the same data will allow product line management to proceed on the basis of quantitative goals that are established in terms of the actual facts of the local situation. The skills required to perform these analyses are not complex, but the task is time intense.