When once asked how he became great, the legendary basketballer Magic Johnson replied that it was competition that made him go out of his way to practice for long hours, to be the best that he could ever be. Similarly, the current healthcare landscape is punctuated by a cut-throat rivalry that has driven service providers into jockeying for an edge.
A fundamental question is how then do we define competition in healthcare? In his 1979 paper ‘How Competitive Forces Shape Strategy’, business strategist Prof Michael Porter described five forces that define competition. These are competitive rivalry, threats of new entrants, bargaining power of suppliers and consumers and threat of substitute products.
