The business planning process applied to an in-house corporate occupational medicine unit.

In using the business planning process we defined our services, determined the lowest available open market price for each, and multiplied the unit price by the number we performed in the year to calculate our income. All our costs were then allocated to these services, and a cost per service determined. These were compared to the commercially available rates. Our unit is the low cost provider by 10%, even when using worst case assumptions. We concluded that contracting with outside organizations for occupational medical services could not be justified on either a cost or a quality basis.