Healthcare and Marketing or Healthcare Marketing?

Consumerism driving a change to result in healthcare marketing

"Healthcare is now purchased from a wholesale and retail-oriented marketing model" - Dr Rashi Agarwal Director PRAXIS - A New Dimension to Healthcare Mumbai

"Who are the most commanding people in the healthcare industry today?" It's actually the 28-year-old young woman who is contemplating whether to get a cosmetically fitting white ceramic crown versus a silver one for her dental treatment. It's also a 40-year-old man who can get his blood test at the local diagnostic centre or get the phlebotomist to come home and collect his sample while he still unwinds in the comfort of his house on a lazy weekend. These two examples illustrate the emerging trend of healthcare consumerism. Though the healthcare field is characterised by complexity, rapid change, evolving distribution, consumer-purchasing behaviour, and pricing and reimbursement pressure; awareness and technology now empower patients to make their own healthcare choices, rather than simply accepting the options lay down by a traditional health system.

The influence of healthcare consumerism today extends to every professional working in the healthcare system compelling providers to respond to consumers' evolving expectations, which are mainly based on choice, control, convenience, and customer service. Healthcare is now purchased from a wholesale and retail-oriented marketing model. Earlier, healthcare organisations did not need to market their services. The providers operated in semi-monopolistic environments. There was an almost unlimited flow of customers, and revenues were essentially guaranteed. This situation began to change. Increasing choice for consumers opened the door to competition. Healthcare organisations began to appreciate that to sustain in this new 'bad' world, they would have to introduce modern business practices into the healthcare arena and adopt concepts and methods long established in other industries. This led to the concept of direct marketing.

Unfortunately, in the early years healthcare professionals did not like the amalgamation of the words healthcare and marketing. Many misconstrued marketing for advertising, and, advertising on the part of health services providers was considered inappropriate. Though prescribed marketing activities became common early on among healthcare organisations like pharmaceuticals, medical equipments and medical supplies, targeting physicians and employers, marketing campaigns targeting healthcare consumers i.e. patients were relatively rare. Healthcare service providers had long resisted the incorporation of formal marketing activities into their operations. Nevertheless, physicians, hospitals and other healthcare organisations had been 'marketing' themselves under the facade of public relations, physician-relationship development, community services, and other activities, but few health professionals equated these with marketing.

The use of marketing techniques have proliferated. Modern healthcare programmes, such as freestanding diagnostic centers and rehabilitation clinics, began using marketing as a means of luring patients from the already established sources of care. Healthcare marketing, however, initiated as an unstable concept. The marketing professionals that healthcare imported from other industries failed in their effort to adapt existing marketing techniques to healthcare uses. Marketing healthcare was not the same as marketing a soft drink! While few methods and techniques could be transferred untouched from other industries, most approaches had to be customised to healthcare. Furthermore, experienced marketers from other industries were not familiar with the healthcare market and, were therefore unable to appreciate the need for long-term initiatives in this industry.

The formal recognition of marketing as a suitable activity for healthcare providers represented an important milestone for healthcare. Healthcare organisations then saw the daybreak to a flurry of marketing activities and got into creating aggressive campaigns. Medical professionals using jargon like 'the market' along with 'angioplasty', 'arteries' and 'vitamins' became more common. The term 'marketing mix' is now heard commonly in boardroom discussions housed in the same building complex where patient care is provided, emphasising on the 4 P's of Marketing: Product, Price, Place and Promotion. Today, the industry has matured into a sophisticated and competitive field, meeting the needs of knowledgeable consumers who are making their own healthcare decisions. The industry is now being compared to the hospitality sector, and is labeled as a service industry.

The acceptance of marketing by health professionals realised the need for the establishment of marketing budgets and the creation of numerous new positions within the organisations. This culminated with the establishment of a marketing department with its' own budget and staff. Positions like general manager and director for marketing came into existence in many organisations with responsibilities of contributing to the bottom line, just like any other department.

The evolution of marketing in healthcare has been slow and is still an ongoing process. After years of reluctant acceptance, and constant nervousness between those who enthusiastically accepted marketing as a function of the healthcare organisation and those who tenaciously resisted it, marketing has now become reasonably well established as a legitimate healthcare function. Though the industry still suffers from a lack of standardisation when it comes to marketing, healthcare marketers now have a much better understanding of the market and their 'target audience'. New approaches have been developed specifically for the healthcare market and reasonably sophisticated market research techniques have been put into place.

Healthcare professionals now appreciate their existence in a service industry and have in fact extended the marketing fundamentals to 7 P's, the additional ones being People, Physical Evidence and Process. A core of healthcare marketing professionals have now emerged along with the tools necessary to plan and implement marketing initiatives with background on the factors that drive marketing approaches and consumer behavior in healthcare. Marketing departments and marketing budgets are under increasing scrutiny in today's healthcare organisation. Developing and implementing a communications and public relations program that meets the needs of both the hospital and its diverse stakeholders is increasingly gaining popularity. From planning and executing an advertising campaign to analysing patient satisfaction data, the evolution of healthcare marketing has been quite dramatic over the past few years. Physician referral 'cuts' have now been replaced by sophisticated terms like 'revenue sharing mode' and 'patient care' by 'customer focus'. Healthcare organisations are now using various means and tools for marketing their ‘product’. Electronic media, digital media, print media, television, radio are just few of the many options healthcare providers are now opting for. Hoardings and billboards now don't just carry your favourite actor selling a car or toothpaste, but also a doctor-patient relationship.

It is now believed that when market planning, market research, and marketing communications come together to achieve planned strategic objectives, organisations succeed. Today, healthcare marketing appears poised to play a greater role in the new healthcare environment.

Few marketing methods are Health education camps/ awareness programmes for consumers, CMEs for physician relation building exercise, medical camps, website, marketing to various referral avenues like corporate, insurance companies, smaller healthcare organisations, attracting international patients through medical tourism and promotional packages for various occasions..

rashi@praxishc.com