Management Case
SWOT ANALYSIS: MED EXPRESS URGENT CARE 7
SWOT Analysis: Med Express Urgent Care
David J.
La Roche College
Abstract
The following chart will analyze Med Express Urgent Care using a SWOT analysis. This chart will display what strengths the company currently possesses as well as their weaknesses, any opportunities available to them, and any threats that may currently exist. This should portray an accurate description of internal and external factors that affect Med Express Urgent Care in their business operations. A SWOT analysis can show where the company is doing well and where it can improve internally, it can also possibly point out any areas that are negative external influences on the company and take corrective actions to fix the issues.
Keyword: strength, weakness, opportunities, threats.
This essay is geared toward providing a SWOT analysis fot the company I work for, Med Express Urgent Care. The analysis will show the strengths, weaknesses, opportunities, and threats that may affect the company.
STRENGTHS
There are many strengths that Med Express Urgent Care possesses. The first is fast and efficient care that is unrivaled in its field. They also have on site x-ray which gives them the capability of assessing and treating fractures on site without making the customer transfer to another facility to have the fracture stabilized. Their hours of operation are also considered a very strong point in their operations. They are open 9 am to 9 pm everyday (except Christmas and Thanksgiving)(medexpress.com). With hours like this, people who work all shifts throughout the day should be able to find time to visit if they need to. The facilities are very clean, this helps comfort the customers as well as increase the possibility that they will give the center a good recommendation. The way patients are treated at Med Express makes each patient feel as if they are more than a number. Most of the managers in each center are very competent and run their centers in a smooth and efficient fashion. Pay for the employee is competitive with the local rates at other medical-type facilities. In the operations field, Med Express is minimizing cost and wasted materials by mass ordering supplies, this saves the company shipping costs and saves the environment the harm caused by transportation.
WEAKNESSES
Though Med Express has many strengths, there are also a few weaknesses that are worthy to mention. Being that I am an employee in f fairly crucial role, I see every day that there is an issue with communications from top to bottom of the company. The grapevine is always more efficient than formal communications. There are also times where we are over staffed with trainers at clinics or we have trainers sitting in hotel rooms. Either way this is a waste of company money that could be saved with a little better planning. Another weakness, which is more of an operational weakness, is the fact that from time to time there are employees hired who are not fully credentialed to perform their job functions. For example, they may hire an x-ray technologist who is not certified yet. This requires the company to pay another registered technologist to come fill a position, basically, there are two people doing the job of one.
OPPORTUNITIES
The opportunities for Med Express prove to be very beneficial for the company as well as the communities they serve. First off, a lot of the communities we go into do not have anything like this to compare to. This means that Med Express has the opportunity to serve the town as well as increase a support base from the community. When we open up a new center, we also build relations with local hospitals and doctors’ offices. This then could increase the amount of patients that will be seen at med express. For example, many of our clinics are close to ear doctors. There are many occasions where the ear doctors send patients to Med Express to have their ears cleaned prior to having an exam. Med Express is also seizing the opportunity to expand along the east coast. This is playing a tremendous role in increasing income and patient support. This has also shown to be making certain investors want to keep investing in the company. With the expansion, we see that a lot of businesses are sending their occupational medicine patients to Med Express. These are patients that require visits or drug screenings due to obtaining employment or being injured at a job. Most of these patients in the past had to wait for a long time at occupational medicine centers or even hospital emergency departments.
THREATS
The positive points have been touched on and now it is time to talk about some negative matters. Though everything is going well, there are certainly threats to Med Express Urgent Care. First and foremost, there are other urgent care centers that attempt to encroach on certain Med Express centers. They pose the threat of taking a percentage of patients that may have gone to Med Express otherwise. With a loss of patients comes a loss of income for the company. Med Express has hundreds of doctors that work for them. With this comes a risk of medical mal practice suits. Law suits such as this cost the company and the physician money, but more importantly, it can cause the customer to lose faith in Med Express. Another threat is certain insurances not being accepted in certain geographic areas. For example, some of the centers accept Medicaid where others do not. In this case, centers that are in areas that have high population of Medicaid may not perform as well if all of the would be patients are going to the emergency department at the local hospital. The last threat, which has already come true is that centers may have to close due to low patient volume. We recently had six centers in Colorado close because they were not seeing enough patients to make it even worth opening the doors in the morning. These centers were far away from any other Med Express resource which made it impossible for other centers to help them move along financially.
This essay points out facts that are strengths, weaknesses, opportunities, and threats to Med Express urgent Care. The following chart provides a visual aid to help assist in organizing the components of the SWOT analysis.
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