Growth by Share Shift: Why Future Health System Growth Depends on Capturing Competitor Market Share

Key Takeaways:

• Saturated healthcare markets and slowed population growth is making it harder for health systems to find net-new patients who have never been seen by a competitor.
• 70 percent of patients in one study were open to switching providers — highlighting an opportunity to recruit patients from competitors.
• Winning market share now requires precision — identifying households showing early care intent and engaging them with targeted messaging before a competitor does.

Planning for the next fiscal year is underway, and healthcare leaders across the country are likely asking themselves a similar question: How can we grow market share? A recent Advisory Board study identified patient access and acquisition as the top strategic priorities for health systems in 2026, underscoring the pressure healthcare leaders feel to bring more care-seekers through their doors.

But healthcare has become increasingly competitive, and market share is becoming harder to win.

Especially in major cities and suburbs, healthcare markets are highly concentrated. Competition for commercially insured patients is intensifying, and emerging digital-first healthcare providers are adding a new layer of competition. Paired with slowed population growth, competing health systems are essentially vying for the same patients.

Health systems’ next era of healthcare growth won’t be fueled solely by opening a new hospital or adding a new service line. New patients will need to come, in part, from an all-too-familiar place: the competitor next door. 

Saturated Markets are Making New Patients Harder to Find

In many geographic markets, healthcare has become the story of a few dominant systems. Independent community hospitals and physician practices have steadily consolidated into larger health systems. Today, nearly 70 percent of all hospitals belong to a health system and 90 percent of hospital markets are considered highly concentrated.

While consolidation has reduced the sheer number of competitors over time, it has also created larger health systems with extensive networks of hospitals, ambulatory sites and physician practices spanning entire regions. As a result, some health systems now compete against organizations with multiple access points and deeply established patient relationships. One report notes that one or two health systems control the inpatient hospital market in nearly half of metropolitan areas.

This creates a challenging growth paradox for health systems: Many patients already have an existing relationship with one of a few dominant systems. Coupled with slowed population growth, the result is that future growth increasingly depends on a health system’s ability to attract patients who may have historically received care elsewhere. Winning market share is becoming less about expanding footprint alone and more about competing more effectively for patients already active in the market. 

Emerging Digital-First Healthcare Providers Pose a New Threat

There are also new competitors entering the space without geographic borders to worry about. Digital healthcare providers are becoming more popular and pose a market share threat to health systems. 

Consumers have more choice than ever before, and many are choosing convenience. Retail entrants, virtual care providers and digital-first healthcare companies are growing in popularity. A recent study found that about 24 percent of consumers would switch doctors to ensure access to virtual visit options.

This highlights an important reality for health systems: Market share is no longer guaranteed by reputation or physical footprint. It can be influenced by easy access and convenience.

Waning Consumer Loyalty Presents a New Opportunity

Now for some good news: While market share is becoming harder to win, consumers are showing signs of abandoning the concept of a healthcare home, where they are loyal to one brand for all their healthcare needs.

Studies show consumers research multiple healthcare providers before scheduling an appointment. And a single visit is no longer an indication of loyalty: In one study, 70 percent of consumers said they are open to changing providers. This switching behavior is especially common among younger audiences. Millennials and Gen Z are nearly six times more likely to switch healthcare providers than older generations.

This flexibility highlights an incredible opportunity for health systems to attract new patients, regardless of past encounters with a competitor. A patient who chose a competitor before might choose your health system for their next visit.

The key to unlocking this opportunity lies in a health system’s ability to identify early-stage healthcare demand in its market, even if that means engaging with a competitor’s patients. 

Shifting Market Share Starts with Intelligence

Growth is shifting from a scale challenge to a precision challenge. Recruiting patients from one health system to another requires better targeting and hyper-specific messaging. Health systems must be able to find intent and pair it with a relevant message – before the competition does.

This requires better market intelligence.

Organizations increasingly need insight into: 

• Households researching care options.
• Geographic areas demonstrating increased healthcare demand, even within a competitor’s region. 
• Consumers showing signs of leaving a competitor’s network.
• Populations most likely to convert into valuable long-term patients. 

With better insight in hand, health systems have an opportunity to shift from mass marketing to personalized, tailored messaging.

Organizations looking to shift patients from competitors may consider tactics such as:

• Local practice or facility awareness campaigns targeting households researching care. 
• “Emergency care near you” messaging targeted to households where your urgent care centers and emergency departments are closer than the competition’s.
• Orthopedic hip and knee messaging targeted to households demonstrating a high propensity for joint care.
• Preventative care messaging targeted to adults over the age of 65 who have not had a colonoscopy within seven years.
• Timely marketing sent during insurance open enrollment season to households who once interacted with your health system but are not loyal patients.

As healthcare competition intensifies, organizations that can pair market intelligence with personalized engagement should be better positioned to influence consumer choice before a scheduling decision is ever made.

How Premier Can Help 

Competing for market share in today’s healthcare environment requires more than opening new access points and launching mass mail campaigns. Traditional healthcare marketing is no longer enough. Health systems need a way to find new patients and present them with relevant service line messaging in the moments when they are researching care options.

Premier is working with leading health systems to get in front of care-seekers before the competition. 

The Premier Growth Platform helps health systems identify emerging healthcare demand at the household level — including both known patients and unknown patients who may have received care from competitors. By combining digital intent signals, demographic intelligence and market analytics, organizations can identify high-value growth opportunities earlier and activate more targeted marketing. Unlike a customer relationship management (CRM) platform that only supports marketing to new patients, the Premier Growth Platform is designed around incremental growth.

Taking it one step further, the Premier Growth Platform integrates with patient data for end-to-end tracking, measuring everything from campaign engagement to new patient visits and, ultimately, revenue. This kind of intelligence enables best practices to scale from one service line to the next.

As consumer loyalty shifts and competition intensifies, health systems need more than traditional growth strategies to capture market share. In today’s competitive healthcare market, growth will belong to organizations that compete with greater precision. With the right intelligence and activation strategies, organizations can turn emerging demand into a competitive advantage.

Learn more about demand forming in your market before the competition. Get your market growth analysis today to receive custom insights and demand trends.