Posted: February 16th, 2017

close the unprofitable clinic and send the patient records to the reminding clinic, hoping that patients of the closed clinic will visit the one that is still open when the need arises.

. Suppose you are the primary decision-maker (with input from the board, of
course) in the healthcare corporation known as Medical Care at Your Doorstep
(MCYD). The clinics operated by MCYD are located in areas that underserved
by hospitals and the mission of the clinics is to provide extended hours of service
and walk-in appointments so that those living in the area of a clinic site can avoid
extended ER waits when needing unscheduled care. MCYD has two clinics in a
certain city, and it has come to the attention of administration that one of these
clinics has become unprofitable. The main cause of this change (from profitability
to not being profitable) is that a competing company, Docs in a Box (DIB), has
recently opened a clinic in close proximity to the MCYD one that is currently having
trouble, and DIB has some new customer incentives in place. The decision you are
faced with at this point is whether to:

a) continue doing business as you have been for the last several years hoping that
customer loyalty will return when the novelty of DIB has worn off; or

b) close the unprofitable clinic and send the patient records to the reminding clinic,
hoping that patients of the closed clinic will visit the one that is still open when the
need arises.