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When Is Potential Competition the Best Thing That Ever Happened to Your Business?
One of my favorite restaurants is an Italian place called Dominick’s. The food is always delicious, the pasta, sauces and dishes are homemade (you cannot beat their meatballs!), the wait staff is always friendly and the prices are fair, too. It’s a family place, with a busy bar and a glass-fronted bakery case with the most sinful-looking desserts. There’s only one Dominick’s, and sometimes it’s so busy that the wait can be well more than an hour. (I’ll bet you have a Dominick’s in your town, too, even if it’s called Antonio’s, Nick’s or Enzo’s – great places to eat!) Just up the same boulevard as Dominick’s is the Olive Garden. Of course, the Olive Garden is an Italian restaurant, too. Even though the food is quite different, it’s also excellent. There are many similarities to Dominick’s; the Olive Garden is a family place, may require a long wait and often sports a busy bar. But as we all know, the big difference between Dominick’s and the Olive Garden is the difference between the personal and the corporate. There is one and only one Dominick’s. There are hundreds of Olive Gardens. While you might find very personalized service and delicious food in both restaurants, their approach to their businesses and how they grow their success is very different. Yet, they co-exist up the street from each very nicely, both serve their customers very well, and both are very successful. So now you’re wondering what Dominick’s and the Olive Garden have to do with health and patient advocacy, right? Last week, we announced a new partnership: AdvoConnection and a newly launched company called CarePlanners. CarePlanners will be providing advocacy services across the country to clients who need any sort of service to make their interface with the healthcare system work more smoothly, from helping them dissect and learn more about a diagnosis, to sorting out or reducing their medical bills, to helping their doctors coordinate their care. For those of you who received an email from me (and if you are an AdvoConnection member, you should have found that announcement in…