1. Use the Internet to corroborate the findings of Dr K.

2. Prepare a report based on the information that you have collected.

3. What are your recommendations to Mary based on your findings?

Mary Beth, President of Caring Children’s Hospitals (CCH), always looked forward to New Years. New Years were meant for family reunions and holidays for her. But this New Year had something totally different in store for her. The previous year had not been good for the hospital revenues. The number of patients served by the hospital had gone down, and the costs of health care were rising. The balance sheet presented a very sorry picture to her. But there was a glimmer of hope in the gloomy balance sheet.

About two years ago, Mary had started a small division within CCH that provided health care for disabled children in their houses. This division resembled a home health-care facility, but Mary was wary about developing this division into a full-fledged home health-care organization within CCH. This division had been doing well for the past two years. It was the only division in CCH with a positive picture in the balance sheet. Mary decided to develop the home health-care division in the hospital to get around the problems facing the hospital’s financial situation.

But there were a lot of issues to be addressed, such as the kind of expansion plan to adopt, the kind of services to be provided by the home health-care facility, the kind of insurance plans that the patients would be able to use, and the type of publicity to use. Mary decided to use the services of Innovative Marketing Consultants (IMC), a top-notch local marketing consulting firm, for addressing these issues and suggesting an expansion plan. A meeting was set up with Dr K, president of IMC, to discuss the issues involved and to explain the details of a home health-care program. Dr K suggested using the Internet to analyze the scope for a new player in the industry, the trends in the industry, the common modes of payment available, the costs involved per patient, the profit margins possible, and the kinds of diseases requiring home health care. The Internet was selected for secondary data analysis because of its speed and availability of up-to-date information.

Dr. K used several search engines available in the Internet, such as Lycos, Infoseek, and AltaVista, to get a wide and varied coverage of the Internet. The information collected from the Internet suggested that the home health-care industry was booming and that pediatric home health care had a significant share in the market. The results also suggested that given a choice, people would prefer to receive the needed care in their homes. Also, the cost involved in serving patients at their houses was significantly less and it was fully covered by Medicare. Home health care was also found to be the fastest growing health-care segment in the nineties. The diagnoses most often referred to home health care were found to be favorable to CCH. These results formed the base for conducting primary research in the market. The use of the Internet allowed Dr K to analyze a wide range of issues within a short time frame.