University Health and Social Care: Market Feasibility Analysis Report

This market feasibility report examines the potential of an online scheduling system to address increasing healthcare demands in the UK. It begins with an overview of the UK healthcare landscape, including the National Health Service (NHS), and discusses industry challenges like long waiting times and the need for improved patient access. The report analyzes the industry environment using Porter's Five Forces, evaluating factors like supplier and buyer power, substitutes, and competition. It emphasizes the importance of customer orientation, including data collection and customer segmentation. Competitive intelligence is considered, focusing on features that can differentiate an online scheduling system from competitors. The report concludes by summarizing the benefits of online scheduling, such as accelerated revenue generation, improved customer experience, and increased brand loyalty. It references relevant studies and statistics to support its findings, highlighting the potential for online scheduling to improve healthcare service delivery and efficiency.

Running head: HEALTH AND SOCIAL CARE
Health and social care
Name of the student:
Name of the University:
Author’s note

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Table of Contents
Market feasibility analysis for health care.......................................................................................2
Introduction:....................................................................................................................................2
Industry overview:...........................................................................................................................2
Analysis of industry environment to introduce online scheduling:.................................................4
Customer orientation evaluation:.....................................................................................................5
Competitive intelligence:.................................................................................................................6
Conclusion:......................................................................................................................................7
Reference.........................................................................................................................................9

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Market feasibility analysis for health care
Introduction:
With the increase in population of UK, the demand for health care services is increasing.
Currently the population of UK is around 65, 648, 100 and the ageing population is one of the
major reason for changing health care demands (United Kingdom population mid-year estimate -
Office for National Statistics 2017). This in turn will mean that prevalence of chronic and long-
term disease will increase. To manage the complexity of people’s health care needs, there will be
a need for better procedures to handle patients and support them in accessing health care
services. One of the challenges for administrator due to high flow of patient is the management
of appointment scheduling. The process of schedule becomes troublesome due to use of
traditional devices like phone calls. Hence, new alternatives and techniques is needed to assist
patient. In the digital world, scheduling appointment over phone is time consuming process and
there is need for online scheduling to make the process easier and free from trouble for all group.
Therefore, the business idea is to implement an online scheduling system that instantly provides
detail of physicians in the city and allow people to book appointments through mobile app. This
report analyses the feasibility of the business idea according to the health care context of UK.
Industry overview:
Long waiting time and far location of outpatient clinic is a cause of dissatisfaction and
poor service use among patients. Often it increases the risk of complication in patient. To make
service readily available to patients and decrease large waiting time, optimizing the appointment
scheduling system is necessary (Zacharias and Pinedo 2014). To test the feasibility of the online

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appointment scheduling system for health care, it is necessary to analyze the health care structure
and health care life cycle of UK. UK has a government sponsored health care system and the
National Health Service (NHS) defines the series of public funded health care systems in UK.
NHS is committed to providing greater information to patient, increasing staff level, improving
service standards and reducing waiting time for appointment (Grosios et al., 2010) By reviewing
this commitment, it can be said that the business idea of online scheduling will become easier
with the support from NHS. However, there are some challenges in the system too. The
relentless demand of the service is increasing the waiting and increasing the financial pressure
for NHS. According to the first quarter report of 2016/2017, the number of patients coming to
emergency department in UK has increased by six million (Evan and Saskia 2017). Due to the
increased demand for service, the threshold value of patients occupying bed in hospitals has also
surpassed the safety limit. Hence, arrival and service time variability may affect the
implementation of the online scheduling system in health care.
The implementation of the online scheduling system will also have to pass through the
life cycle phase of introduction, growth, maturity and decline. The following considerations will
be needed at each stage of life cycle for implementation of online scheduling system:
Introduction stage: The administrator need to plan about the type of online scheduling needed
according to service type variability and patient provider preference.
Growth stage: In this stage, experience of scheduling staff in using required information
technology for online scheduling is necessary.
Maturity stage: The patient demographic and the uptake of the new system will determine the
success of the business idea for health care.

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Decline stage: Successful implementation will depend on increase in online scheduling system
among patients and compliance with the Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act
(HIPAA) (Gupta and Denton 2008).
Analysis of industry environment to introduce online scheduling:
Supplier’s power: The bargaining power of supplier will be high because health care centers will
be dependent on them for introduction of online scheduling system.
Buyer’s power: The bargaining power of buyer’s is high because the success of the project is
dependent on the way client’s use this service. There are certain people who do not prefer online
booking and are convenient with the traditional system of booking. This may hurt the business
idea.
Substitutes: The threat of substitute is low in case of online appointment scheduling in health
care because the service provides many potential benefit both to the patient and the health care
practice. It minimizes the chaos associated with manual scheduling system and health care
providers can choose different types of scheduling options based on practice and type of health
care service provided (Erdogan et al., 2015).
Competitors: The high usage of online scheduling system is dependent on the development of a
user-friendly system. Hence, different types of advanced technology determines the efficiency of
the system and so different types of advanced technology and appointment scheduling software
can act as a major competitors in this venture.

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Potential entrants: The threat of new entrants in the business idea is low because whatever
advancement may come, online booking system cannot be replaced. There are chances of
improving the system, but total replacement option is low.
Customer orientation evaluation:
To go forward with the project, customer evaluation will be necessary to determine the
usage of the service among health care consumers. First, primary and secondary data needs to be
collected to identify the number of consumers using traditional booking system now. This will
help to compare the no show at the appointment desk after the implementation of service.
Critical evaluation will also be needed to identify the resource needed both internally and
externally to implement and operationalize the new scheduling system. The data collection phase
may done by clinic wise survey and needs assessment report (Grol et al. 2013). On that basis,
key deliverable, staffing requirement, resource requirement, written specifications and
deployment plan can be made. A detailed implementation and deployment timeline will also be
needed to achieved key objectives at the right time.
Customer segmentation and profiling can be done by means of analyzing the main group
of customers coming to access the health care service. On the basis of different age group of
client, the focus will be to introduce a feature that is readily available for all groups of consumer.
To attract more and more consumers to use the system, 4Cs of customer experience needs to be
provided. These are content, convenience, consistency and contextual advantage (Gunter and
Furnham, 2014). Analysing key stakeholders in the venture is also important. This may include
consumer, administration, health care managers and health care providers. Getting their view of

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the service and convincing them about the advantage of service to meet health care demands is
necessary.
Competitive intelligence:
While going forward with the online scheduling system project, availability of online
different types of online scheduling system in other health care facility will provide stiff
competition. The competition in the digital world is high because consumers now get access to
unlimited choices in terms of online scheduling apps and other tools (Feldman et al., 2014).
Therefore, determining what unique and seamless property an administrator can include in their
online scheduling tool will segregate them from other competitors and determine the success of
the business venture. Some of the top features that can be added to offer unique property to the
online scheduling system include the following:
 Appointment reminder features
 Calendar integration
 Customer management features
 Payment processing features
 Compatibility features
The above mentioned features will help to enhance performance and promote competitive
intelligence in planning and implementation of online scheduling system too.
The business idea of online scheduling is likely to give a competitive edge to health care
centre because it helps to serve four important business needs:

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1. Online scheduling can accelerate the sales cycle and generation of revenue. The
likelihood of revenue generation is high because of higher lifetime customer value and
increased customer engagement with the product.
2. It has the potential to provide a superior customer experience to health care consumers.
This will lead to retention of the service. There is greater likelihood of switching to
online self-scheduling tools dues to penetration on internet and digital technology and
devices. Consumers are most likely to accept it because of greater convenience and
control over booking and efficiency of the system (Snyder et al. 2014). There is a
prediction that 64% of patients will book health care appointments by online mode by
2019 (Business Case for Online Appointment Scheduling & Customer Engagement
2017).
3. The online scheduling system also has the potential to increase the brand loyalty factors
by means of repeat purchasing, recommending the service or app to others and trying
new offerings in health care.
4. The most significant point is that it reduces the cost of appointments.
Conclusion:
The market feasibility report summarized the potential of online scheduling system to
address the high care demands in UK and save time and late appointments for clinical service.
The success of the project was evaluated on the basis of structure of industry and opportunities to
get adequate support for the venture. The performance of the service was also evaluated in terms
of industry environment by Porter’s five forces analysis. The identification of challenges and
opportunities in the project helped to devise customer-orientation plans and determine the key
deliverables needed to achieve the project goal. The competitive intelligence of the service was

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sought to be enhanced by unique scheduling features and realizing the diverse range of
advantage of the service for business and revenue generation.

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Reference
Business Case for Online Appointment Scheduling & Customer Engagement. (2017). Retrieved
14 August 2017, from
https://web.timetrade.com/files/content_resource/TimeTrade_Building_Business_Case_for_Onli
ne_Appointment_eBook.pdf
Erdogan, S.A., Gose, A. and Denton, B.T., 2015. Online appointment sequencing and
scheduling. IIE Transactions, 47(11), pp.1267-1286.
Evans, R., and Saskia, K. 2017. Demand for NHS services soars to record levels. The King's
Fund. Retrieved 14 August 2017, from
https://www.kingsfund.org.uk/press/press-releases/demand-nhs-services-soars-record-levels
Feldman, J., Liu, N., Topaloglu, H. and Ziya, S., 2014. Appointment scheduling under patient
preference and no-show behavior. Operations Research, 62(4), pp.794-811.
Grol, R., Wensing, M., Eccles, M. and Davis, D. eds., 2013. Improving patient care: the
implementation of change in health care. John Wiley & Sons.
Grosios, K., Gahan, P.B. and Burbidge, J., 2010. Overview of healthcare in the UK. EPMA
Journal, 1(4), pp.529-534.
Gunter, B. and Furnham, A., 2014. Consumer Profiles (RLE Consumer Behaviour): An
Introduction to Psychographics (Vol. 5). Routledge.
Gupta, D. and Denton, B., 2008. Appointment scheduling in health care: Challenges and
opportunities. IIE transactions, 40(9), pp.800-819.’

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Snyder, K., Ornes, L.L. and Paulson, P., 2014. Engaging patients through your website. Journal
for Healthcare Quality, 36(2), pp.33-38.
United Kingdom population mid-year estimate - Office for National Statistics.
(2017). Ons.gov.uk. Retrieved 14 August 2017, from
https://www.ons.gov.uk/peoplepopulationandcommunity/populationandmigration/
populationestimates/timeseries/ukpop/pop
Zacharias, C. and Pinedo, M., 2014. Appointment Scheduling with No‐Shows and
Overbooking. Production and Operations Management, 23(5), pp.788-801.