This case study discusses the overall health care situation in a small mountain community in North Carolina called Ashe County. This is a community that apparently is rich in history and background, but suffers the same poor health care status of many rural communities. The community is plagued by many issues, some of which including the providing of and the financing of quality health care. It seems unfortunate that the community’s rich historical background does not bring more tourists to the local economy. The lack of funding and a strong economy has kept providers from moving to the community. This has made it so that the amount of available health care providers is few and they are often strained with more patients then they can care for. The county’s limited…show more content… The County also faces a challenge because the Medicare and Medicaid payments are often not enough to cover expenses. Due to the fact that many of the residents of the county have blue collar construction type jobs, residents that actually have health insurance are few and far between. It is also true that a large part of the community is unemployed or is amongst the senior population. Ashe County has a larger senior population that even many of the other rural communities. All these factors have left Ashe County with a very precarious health care situation. With the situation in Ashe County, many of the traditional strategic planning concepts will not work as well as they would in larger communities. For example as a Health Care manager I would perform a service area competitor analysis in larger communities. This would be necessary in order to gain an understanding of the current competitor environment. The service area competitor analysis would also help our organization to see where our competitors may have weaknesses and help us to gain a competitive
