Hospital Intelligence Brief

How to Identify Potential Market Opportunities From Public Healthcare Data

Public data is good at pointing to places worth a closer look. It is poor at telling you whether the place is worth entering.

HealthcareHospital Market Intelligence7 min read incl. interactiveInteractive experienceReviewed October 2026

1. The business problem

How do you use public data to find opportunities without chasing volume that will not pay?

Market data invites opportunity-hunting: a service where share is low, a market that is growing, a competitor that is slipping. Some of these are real opportunities. Many are not, because volume without margin, capacity or fit is not an opportunity.

This matters because acting on a screen without testing it can mean building services that never earn back their cost.

2. What the evidence can reveal

A disciplined opportunity screen has two stages:

  1. Calculated Stage one, from public data: where is demand growing, where are we under-shared, and where are competitors weak or gaining?
  2. Information gap Stage two, from internal and local evidence: would the volume pay (payer mix, contribution per case), can we serve it (capacity, staffing, physicians), and does it fit (strategy, quality)?

Verified fact Public discharge data supports stage one. Stage two needs the hospital’s own financial and operational data, which public sources do not contain.

3. Investigate the problem

In the synthetic market, stage one produces a short list. Illustrative Overall share moved from 27.7% to 26.4%, while outmigration rose from 10.2% to 11.2%. Within categories, our discharges fell in Obstetrics, Orthopedics and Oncology. General Surgery grew 5.4%.

Calculated A raw screen might say “Orthopedics and Oncology are losing share, so invest there.” But that is only a flag. Oncology is a small category (267 discharges in FY26) where a few cases move share a lot. Orthopedics is larger, but whether it pays depends on contribution per case, which this dataset does not contain.

Information gap That is the point of the two-stage screen. Stage one produced questions. Stage two, which needs contribution per case, capacity and physician availability, decides whether any of them is an opportunity. Public data alone cannot clear that bar.

4. Explore the interactive experience

Investigate it yourself.

Hospital Market Explorer: a market dashboard comparing a five-hospital market by service category, an outmigration capture scenario, evidence-linked answers from APIS, and a sample brief, all on synthetic data.

The experience below uses a synthetic five-hospital market built to look like public discharge data. It is not New York data, or data for any real market, and every figure is illustrative. The counts are discharges, not dollars.

  1. Select Oncology and Orthopedics in turn. How large are they relative to each other?
  2. Ask APIS “What can this data not tell us about profitability?” to see the limits of stage one.
  3. Use the Scenario tab to see how little a small capture adds, then decide what stage two would need to show.

5. Evaluate possible solutions

A screen produces candidates. These options describe how to take candidates forward without over-committing.

Build a ranked shortlist

When it may fit: Several candidates exist and resources are limited.

Evidence needed: Size, trend, share gap and strategic fit for each.

Trade-off: Ranking can over-weight what is easy to measure.

Test candidates with financial data

When it may fit: A candidate looks attractive on volume.

Evidence needed: Contribution per case, payer mix, capacity.

Trade-off: Financial data may be hard to assemble by service.

Pilot before building

When it may fit: Demand looks real but uncertain.

Evidence needed: A small, measurable test.

Trade-off: Pilots can understate or overstate full-scale results.

Pass on candidates that fail stage two

When it may fit: Volume is there but economics or fit are not.

Evidence needed: A clear written reason.

Trade-off: The opportunity may reappear later; revisit periodically.

6. What leadership should do next

Questions to answer

  • Where is demand growing and our share low?
  • Would the volume pay?
  • Can we serve it?
  • Does it fit our strategy?

Data to gather

  • Public market data by category
  • Contribution per case by service
  • Capacity, staffing and physician availability
  • Strategic priorities

Steps to take

  1. Run stage one on public data.
  2. Test each candidate with stage-two evidence.
  3. Pilot where evidence is mixed.
  4. Document why you pass on the rest.

7. Engage Two Pillars

Explore Your Hospital’s Opportunities

Two Pillars can help hospital leadership investigate market, financial, operational, and strategic questions using relevant organizational data, public information, and a structured assessment process. A good first step is a two-stage opportunity screen: public market data first, then your own financial and operational evidence.

Discuss Your Hospital’s ChallengesMore Healthcare intelligence

Sources and data notes

  • The organization, its figures, and every number in this article and its interactive experience are synthetic and illustrative. They are not real data, a benchmark, or a forecast.
  • New York State Department of Health, SPARCS: www.health.ny.gov/statistics/sparcs/ — information on the Statewide Planning and Research Cooperative System and its public-use data files.
  • CMS, Cost Reports: www.cms.gov/data-research/statistics-trends-and-reports/cost-reports — public information on the annual cost reports that Medicare-participating hospitals file.
  • Reviewed October 2026. This article describes an approach to investigation. It does not replace review by qualified professionals.