Dive Brief:
- While hospital acquisitions and consolidations have been the major trend of the past few years, one major hospital company is going another direction.
- CEO Milton Johnson of HCA Holdings, based in Nashville, TN, spoke at the Nashville Business Breakfast this week about the company's alternative plans for expansion.
- Although it has acquired some health IT services in recent years, its primary focus is on expanding its current assets.
Dive Insight:
Johnson says HCA's focus is on growing its services in existing markets because regulatory controls have made it difficult to increase market share by purchasing competitors in urban markets that only have a few players, reports the Nashville Business Journal. Also, HCA isn't interested in entering a new market that has only one or two hospitals.
"If we go into a market we want to be No. 1 or No. 2," he said.
Johnson pointed toward HCA's TriStar Health as a model for how the company plans to grow. The system is aiming to have a TriStar access point located within 15 minutes for everyone in middle Tennessee.
"Our growth strategy is to take market share in these larger markets," he said.