Strategic market analysis: an effective tool for collaboration.

If collaboration, not unrestrained competition, is part of the answer to containing health care costs, providers must choose their partners carefully. Competition won't disappear. It's here to stay. But many in our industry have come to the conclusion that increased collaboration is necessary to preserve community health care resources and prevent wasteful duplication of services and technology. Managed competition--a combination of government regulation and free markets--means simply that collaboration and competition will coexist in a new health care environment evolving toward integrated delivery systems of varying kinds.