eThesis - School of Business electronic theses

The goal of this paper is to explore if the concept of revenue management is applicable to private healthcare services. The paper concentrates especially on private healthcare providers and not on the public sector. This is found out to be a new business to study revenue management possibilities.

The paper introduces academic literature from the fields that have adopted revenue management, the most common models and what is known about revenue management in healthcare services. Synthesizing the academic literature and revenue management models with different characteristics and features, the possible applications and design of a healthcare RM model is evaluated.

The study method is a single-case study and the case company is a private healthcare provider in Finland. The data used in the case study is actual booking data collected from the case company. This booking data is the basis for analyzing customer booking curves, making demand forecasts and finally suggesting a revenue management model for the case company. The objective is to find a universal model for this sector, not only for the case company to implement in practice.

The evidence from the case company indicates that the conditions for successful implementation of revenue management are fulfilled in private healthcare. The suggested models combine different aspects from traditional revenue management fields and they can be modified to meet individual needs and objectives of the adopter company.