Competition has become a way of life in almost all healthcare markets.
As a result, most healthcare organizations now actively engage in the pursuit
of competitive advantage. As they do so, however, these competitors
are forced to confront a number of important and distinctive realities. First,
healthcare is highly unique in the sense that competitive advantage is heavily
cloaked in institutional restraints, which stem from
• an extensive array of regulatory and payment structures,
• a highly restrictive and dynamic moral and religious milieu,
• high levels of interorganizational interdependencies among provider
entities, and
• historically grounded expectations for autonomy by many health
professional groups.