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When you are planning to open a new practice – be it dental, medical, allied health, or any other – selecting the right location is critical to success.
You want to ensure:
- There aren’t too many competing practices nearby
- There are enough potential patients in the area to support the practice
- Patients in the area can afford the services
- The location is visible enough for people to know you’re there
Traditionally, these decisions have tended to rely on instinct and in-person scouting. New practice owners will pick a general area, look around for the best available site, perhaps do a little research, and then lease or buy it and hope for the best. 
Fortunately, this approach is no longer the only one you can take. With an abundance of publicly available data at our fingertips, independent practice owners through to corporate healthcare groups and investors can now make far more informed site selection decisions – once they have the means to bring all that data together.
Leveraging data to pinpoint your next practice location
RSM has analytics specialists across our business advisory, corporate finance, and other divisions who have worked with data long before it became the buzzword it is today.
They are constantly exploring new ways to turn information into practical insights that support our clients.
In the healthcare space, this thirst for innovation has recently led to the development of a powerful data-driven market intelligence and decision platform: ATLAS. The strategic platform has been specifically designed to support healthcare investment decisions – including market mapping, location and rollout strategies, expansion planning, asset benchmarking, and deal origination.
The platform uses proprietary logic and a clear scoring framework to identify the strongest locations based on multiple data inputs, such as:
- population and demographic data
- public health data
- socioeconomic data
- competing clinic reviews
- plus other relevant data
At a glance, practice owners can determine if a site they had in mind is likely to be competitive, or whether there are other locations that may provide better opportunities.
ATLAS allows multi-factor modelling and catchment analysis across Australia, down to suburb-level insights, and combines socio-economic data, competitor concentration, and other key factors to provide a clear picture of a specific location. This includes proximity to competing practices and how well those practices are performing from a customer review perspective.
The ability to access this data in such a meaningful way allows new practice owners and investors to avoid the uncertainty and pressure that comes from making these decisions on hope or instinct alone, and start their venture by taking a highly considered and evidence-based approach.
Replacing guesswork with data-backed insight
Beyond selecting a location for a new healthcare clinic, practice owners can leverage similar-style tools to make data-driven decisions in areas such as:
- expanding their practice with extra locations
- adding new practice services
- engaging more clinicians
In situations where a practice is underperforming, these tools can also be used to benchmark performance against other nearby practices to determine if poor results are likely due to service delivery or the location where you have chosen to practice.
The reality is that practice owners, healthcare groups, multi-site operators and investors are increasingly using data to gain these insights and make these types of strategic decisions, leaving those who don’t struggling to compete with practices that have a deeper understanding of the market.
If you are ready to take a more data-driven approach to healthcare operations, expansion and investment decisions, we can help. From leveraging ATLAS for site selection to running scenario modelling using practice data so you can take a more informed approach to business strategy, our experienced advisors and analysts are here to support you.
To learn more, please contact Peter Nicol or Tair Kuanyshev
