SECA 9 Rivalry

Identify your organization's main rivals. Assess their relative strengths and weaknesses. How would your rivals assess your relative strengths and weaknesses in the competitive arena?

Kaiser Permanente, the nation’s largest nonprofit HMO group, has many rivals such as Aetna, Blue Cross/Blue Shield and United Healthcare.  Some of the relative weaknesses of these organizations are lack of beds, operating theatres, and laboratory facilities.  Operating theatres, laboratory facilities, and hospital beds usually require new buildings and more employees (nurses), thus uselessly increasing the cost of treatment.  This increase in cost may decrease the marginal revenue for some of these hospitals.  The strengths of these medical groups would have to be access and the specialized medical treatment.  Since Kaiser is a separate specialized network, some healthcare providers are able to join more than one organization.  Some physicians can see physicians within the Aetna and Blue Cross network.  With the opportunity to be your own boss, some specialists prefer to join these other networks due to increase revenue. With Kaiser, physicians are salaried, so no matter how many patients one sees, the salary remains the same.    Since specialties reimbursement is usually higher, they feel they can make more money by joining these networks. 

Others would view Kaiser Permanente strength as more private/preventative care/electronic medical records/community work. For example, many facilities offer private beds with more private care.  Since Kaiser spends a lot of money on preventative care, majority of their patients do not require in-hospital care.  This allows Kaiser to provide a facility with a more one on one service for its patients.  Kaiser has also specialized with preventative care. They offer numerous classes for diabetes and high blood pressures.  These classes allow Kaiser to reduce the amount of patients who come to the hospital with end-stage organ damage. Their electronic medical records allows for reduce medical errors.  The weakness the Kaiser poses would have to be geographical locations. For example, if you belong to the Aetna network, a patient would be able to go anywhere in the nation to obtain healthcare. With Kaiser, they are only located in select state.