BCG Marketing Matrix

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The BCG marketing matrix categorizes businesses or business units into one of four cells, by market share versus market growth rate for the industry in the current year. A health care organization has different business units that provide different types of services or products. Within a large healthcare organization, such as a medical group or a hospital, units like diagnostic imaging provide much different services than home care services, or even emergency room services. A star among the various lines of service for the hospital or large medical center is the home care services unit. This is a unit that requires an initial investment of nurse and case managers, nurse and home health staff, therapists, and other skilled healthcare workers to provide services to patients after they are sent home.The home care market is growing and is highly competitive, due to the aging population. However, as a start up service for the healthcare organization, it will compete with other home health companies within the community, which are already established. As the aging population grows the potential for
increased market share exists. However, at some point the growth will stabilize and home care services will become a cash cow, if the organization develops a sound plan for growth and maintains market share.

A cash cow for the hospital or medical center is patient admissions. The market for inpatient care will also grow with an aging population and healthcare organizations have developed highly defined processes for providing such care. Many hospitals already generate much of their profit from admissions with many making a profit of over $1,200 per patient (Colliver, 2003). Inpatient admissions come from many sources, ...