Most practices have a rough idea of who they compete with and almost no written record of it. Healthcare competitor analysis fixes that by turning hunches about rival practices into a grid you can compare, argue over and act on.
The method below works for a single-location clinic or a small group. It needs a spreadsheet, a few hours and a willingness to look at your own practice the way a stranger would.
Who to include in a healthcare competitor analysis
A competitor is any group that would capture your patients if your practice weren't there. Physicians Practice frames the starting question as where your patients would go for care if you were not around.
That answer is usually wider than the clinic down the road. Urgent care centres, hospital-owned clinics and telehealth providers all take the same patient on a given afternoon, even if you never meet them at a conference.
Sort what you find by how directly each one competes in your catchment area, meaning the geography your patients actually travel from. Two or three direct rivals deserve a full profile. The rest get a line each.
What to record about each rival
Record the things a patient or a referring physician could notice, plus a few you can estimate. The Physicians Practice guide lists providers and services, equipment, patient volume and estimated market share, the media they use to promote their physicians, and their strengths and weaknesses.
Put competitors down the left side of a spreadsheet and the features across the top. That layout is the competition grid the same guide recommends, and it makes gaps visible in a way a folder of screenshots never does.
- Services and providers, including anything you don't offer.
- Size, with patient volume as a rough estimate rather than a claim you can't support.
- How they market: paid ads, social, email, community events, referral relationships.
- Their Google listing: categories, photo count, review count and rating.
- Website: what the first screen promises and how easy it is to book.
- What patients and referrers say about them, in reviews and in conversation.
Some of this will be guesswork, and that's fine as long as the grid says so. An estimate labelled as an estimate is still more useful than an empty cell.
Google Business Profile and local search
For most practices, the competitor that matters most is whoever shows up above them in the local results. Google says local results are mainly based on relevance, distance and prominence, and that nobody can pay for a better local ranking.
You can't change distance. Relevance and prominence are where you compete, and Google ties prominence partly to review volume and to how many websites link to a business.
So search the terms your patients would type, in the neighbourhoods you serve, and note who appears. Then open each listing and compare it with yours line by line. Our guide to optimising a healthcare Google Business Profile covers what to fix once you see where you trail.
Reviews: the comparison patients actually make
Reviews are the part of your competitors' presence that patients read most closely. In a Reputation and YouGov survey of 1,227 US adults, covered by Localogy in February 2022, about 75% said they read online ratings and reviews when choosing a facility or physician.
Only insurance and location ranked higher as decision factors.
The same survey found that 65% said it matters whether providers respond. That makes reply habits worth a column in your grid.
Check three things for each rival: how many reviews they have, how recent the latest ones are, and whether anyone from the practice answers. A rival with a slightly lower rating and a fast, polite reply to every complaint can look better than one with a higher score and silence.
This is a commissioned survey from a reputation-management company, so treat the percentages as direction rather than law. The direction is hard to argue with, though. Patients read reviews, and they notice who answers them.
Be careful what you say when you reply
Studying how rivals answer reviews is useful. Copying the worst habits is expensive. A North Carolina dental practice answered a negative Google review by naming the patient and describing his dental services, and OCR imposed a $50,000 civil monetary penalty, announced in March 2022.
The practice had also refused to release its HIPAA policies and didn't answer OCR's findings in writing, which is why the outcome was a penalty for willful neglect. Even so, the review reply was where it started.
If you see a competitor arguing with a patient in public, note it as a weakness and move on. Your own replies should thank the reviewer and invite them to call, without confirming that they were a patient or describing their care.
Website and service pages
Photo by Erik Mclean on Pexels
A rival's website tells you what they want to be known for. Read their service pages the way a worried patient would: can you tell what they treat, who treats it and how to book?
Look for services they push hard that you offer but barely mention, and for services they ignore entirely. The second kind is a gap you can fill with a dedicated page.
If your own site loses this comparison on clarity or speed, fix that before you spend anything on promotion. Our piece on signs a dental practice website needs a redesign is a useful checklist for that comparison.
Finding your differentiator
Once the grid is filled in, read it column by column and look for something you do that no one else does well. Physicians Practice makes the same point: identify what you offer that rivals can't, then put it at the centre of your marketing.
Be strict about what qualifies. Saying you care about patients is not a differentiator, because every rival says it. Evening and weekend appointments, a specific procedure, a language your neighbours speak, or a short wait for new-patient bookings all can be.
Weak columns matter as much as strong ones. If three direct rivals all have hundreds of reviews and you have thirty, the most valuable marketing job in the next quarter is collecting honest ones. Real patient stories help here, and we've written about why patient testimonials carry so much weight in healthcare marketing.
Turning the grid into a plan
Pick no more than three actions from the grid and give each an owner and a date. A list of fifteen findings feels thorough and gets nothing done.
A reasonable order: fix whatever makes you harder to find or book first, then close the review gap, then publish the pages that exploit a service gap. If you want help with the execution side, talk to us about our digital marketing and growth services.
Then put the next review in the calendar. Physicians Practice describes competitive assessment as ongoing rather than a one-off project, and it doesn't prescribe a schedule. Choose one that you will actually keep, such as a quick look at the top rivals' listings each quarter.
Frequently asked questions
How often should I repeat a healthcare competitor analysis?
The Physicians Practice guide says the assessment should be ongoing but gives no fixed interval. Pick a cadence you'll keep, and repeat it sooner if a new clinic opens or a rival changes its services.
What if I can't find a rival's patient volume or market share?
Estimate it, and mark the cell as an estimate. The same guide treats patient volume and market share as estimated figures, and a rough number is enough to rank rivals by how directly they compete.
Can I reply to a negative review that names a real patient?
Reply without confirming the person was a patient or mentioning their care. OCR's $50,000 penalty against a North Carolina dental practice followed a reply that named a patient and described his services.
Sources
- How to study your medical practice competition — Physicians Practice
- Improve your local ranking on Google — Google Business Profile Help
