Deck 8: Value-Adding Service Delivery Strategies

Question 1

The value chain consists of value-adding service delivery strategies that are primarily operations (clinical) and marketing oriented as well as value-adding support strategies that include organizational culture, organizational structure, and strategic resources.

Answer 1

True

Question 2

Discuss the importance of point- of-service activities as an element of value-adding strategies.

Answer 2

Point-of-service is a transformational process that incorporates an organization's resources - human and non-human, competencies, and capabilities: its assets - into value-added service delivery. Health care was a cottage industry for centuries. Specialization, cost pressures, and the actual work being done have taken health care from being totally customized for the individual patient in his or her home to an attempt to treat patients more similarly so as to develop economies of scale. Placing people in hospitals, outcomes measures, formularies, and so on, focus on treating patients more alike - the industrialization of health care. Most Americans and their physicians do not like it. The best services delivery differs for each organization depending on the strategies determined during strategy formulation.

Question 3

An attractive location for a health care provider offers convenient proximity to patients' homes and work.

Answer 3

True

Question 4

What are the value- adding service delivery strategies?

A)Organizational structure, organizational culture, and strategic resources.
B)Pre-service, point-of-service, and after-service.
C)Cost leadership, differentiation, and focus.
D)Merger, acquisition, and internal investment.

Question 5

The process of developing value- adding strategies involves which of these comparisons?

A)Compare strategy requirements with internal analysis.
B)Comparison of directional strategies with competitive strategies.
C)Comparison of organizational culture with organizational structure.
D)Comparison of adaptive strategies with market entry strategies.

Question 6

Describe what a brand represents for an organization and why branding is important to service organizations.

Question 7

Discuss the difficulty in pricing health care.

Question 8

Discuss the translational qualities of value- adding strategies.

Question 9

Pre-service pricing decisions concentrate on the services offered, the ability of the consumer to pay, and the cost to deliver the service.

Question 10

Which of the following statements is TRUE of change in value-adding strategies?

A)Change in value-adding strategies is the easiest element of strategy implementation.
B)The pace of change in an organization cannot be influenced by management and leadership.
C)Successful change in the value-adding strategies requires leaders to establish a sense of urgency for change and to clearly articulate the connections between the new ways of doing things and success of the selected strategies.
D)Change in value-adding strategies is independent of value-adding support strategies.

Question 11

Promotion includes: advertising; public relations events (baby birthday parties, health fairs, cancer survivor celebrations, and so on); personal
selling; sales promotion (contests, participation in trade shows, and so on); and customer information gathering (surveys, data mining, and so on).

Question 12

A brand represents three things: what an organization offers to the market, what an organization does, and what an organization is.

Question 13

Which of the following terms is defined as "the process of identifying recognizable groups that make up the market and then selecting a group as the target market?"

A)Market segregation.
B)Market aggregation.
C)Market research.
D)Segmentation.

Question 14

In terms of ends/means relationships, which of the following statements are true?

A)Action plans are the ends to the means of developing value-adding strategies.
B)Value-adding strategies are the means for accomplishing the ends of directional, adaptive, market entry, and competitive strategies.
C)Support strategies are the ends for the means of value-adding strategies.
D)None of the above statements is true.

Question 15

Insignificant branding activity in health care has focused on the abstract concepts of promoting and creating identities for health care organizations.

Question 16

How does clinical process improvement (CPI) differ from continuous quality improvement (CQI)?

A)CPI and CQI do not differ, they are identical concepts.
B)CQI focuses on improving existing clinical processes for performance improvement while CPI is a contextual and critical appraisal of current clinical processes to identify opportunities for more effectively providing care.
C)CQI focuses on operational efficiency and achieving the lowest possible cost while CPI does not consider cost.
D)CPI focuses on the innovation of ideas, tools, and systems; CQI is a based solely on statistical analysis.

Question 17

Which of the following are after- service activities?

A)Clinical and marketing follow-up.
B)Billing.
C)Follow-on activities.
D)All of the above.

Question 18

What is the basis for determining price by health care organizations?

A)The best formulas for determining price involve setting price on the highest possible margin above cost.
B)The novelty of the product or service is the best basis for establishing price.
C)A health care organization determines a price based on the services offered, the ability of the consumer to pay, and the cost to deliver the service.
D)Cost leadership that generates low prices relative to competitors is always the best basis for pricing in health care.

Question 19

Which of the following is NOT what a brand represents?

A)How an organization is structured.
B)What an organization offers to the market.
C)What an organization does.
D)What an organization is.

Question 20

Which of the following is central to developing pre- service strategies?

A)Leadership.
B)Finance.
C)Marketing.
D)Capital structure.

Question 21

After-service includes follow-up (both clinical and marketing), billing, and follow-on activities.

Question 22

Segmentation is the process of identifying recognizable groups that make up the market and then selecting a group as the target market.

Question 23

When the requirements of the strategy match the current pre-service strengths and needs of the customers, then strategic managers should focus on maintaining those strengths, giving particular attention to those areas that have created competitive advantage.

Question 24

Central to point-of-service delivery are issues such as quality, efficiency/speed, innovation, and flexibility (mass customization) of the service.

Question 25

Service delivery strategies and support strategies are not separate but, rather, interact and complement each other.

Question 26

An organization's culture, structure, and strategic resources are value- adding support activities.

Question 27

Based on the results of the comparison of the current situation and what strategic managers want the organization to be, value chain components may need to be maintained or changed to carry out the strategy.

Question 28

Pre-service strategies attempt to identify the specific target market and define the services to be offered.

Question 29

Personal selling has been used more extensively in health care as various organizations compete to be the provider of choice in managed care plans.

Question 30

Health care marketing is simplified by the need to focus on a single class of customer - health care consumers (patients).

Question 31

Physicians are a minor target for marketing efforts because they recommend other health care providers for their patients.

Question 32

Specifying point-of-service configurations and processes is NOT one of the activities specified by service delivery strategies.

Question 33

An organization's action plans link its individual organizational units to the overall strategy of the organization.

Question 34

Point-of-service is a transformational process that incorporates an
organization's resources - human and non-human, competencies, and capabilities: its assets - into value-added service delivery.

Question 35

Market research provides information only about potential customers.

Question 36

The human resources unit of a health care organization is generally considered to be engaged in value-adding service activities.

Question 37

Marketing research is NOT a pre-service activity.

Question 38

Value-adding strategies must accomplish the directional, adaptive, market entry, and competitive strategies and the action plans must accomplish the value-adding strategies.

Question 39

Pre-service entails the planning and activities that enable the organization to determine its customers and the services that will be offered to them as they enter the system.