A FEW THINGS ABOUT OPTIMIZING THE BUSINESS PORTFOLIO OF MEDICAL CLINICS

Abstract

The article - "A few things about optimizing the business portfolio of medical clinics" –   proves the need for periodic restructuring of business portfolios on the example of a hypothetical medical clinic, and states that global competition and systematic changes in it have forced companies to face this need. The article talks about the fact that due to the abundance of clinics and beds, fierce competition is raging in the field of healthcare in Georgia. Added to this is the aspiration of Georgian patients to be treated not here in Georgia, but in foreign countries. Everyone knows that medical services abroad are expensive. Georgian clinics still cannot compete with foreign clinics in terms of quality. Their advantage is only the low cost and hence the low price of the service. With these criteria, a number of Georgian clinics are preferred not only by local patients, but also by foreign patients. From this point of view, the article advises Georgian managers to learn how to manage their own business portal in such a way that they have only low-cost and highly profitable business units. This will happen if the business unit has a high growth rate (>10%) and a significant market share (>1%). In this regard, the article presents and evaluates the business portfolio of a hypothetical clinic based on its three-year performance (the indicators are conditional) in the form of a BCG matrix developed by the Boston consulting group. Departments are represented as business units in the clinic's business portfolio, each of them is responsible for profits, investments, or expenses. Based on the evaluation of the performance indicators of the clinic departments, it was concluded that the departments of surgery, cardiology and neurosurgery should remain in the portfolio of the clinic, while the food block, as a high-cost one, should be outsourced from the portfolio. This discussion ends in the article by presenting a matrix picture of the new, optimized business portfolio of the clinic.