Short Paper
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Essentialsofhealthcaremarketing.docxConclusions
Marketing plans and strategies are developed in the context of, and in response to, the broader macro environment. Although the environment cannot be controlled, organizations must recognize ongoing trends and factors that will likely affect their market success. Because the environmental factors are dynamic, a health care organization must maintain a continual monitoring process and adjust its marketing plans accordingly.
CHAPTER SUMMARY
1. Marketing strategy must be developed in response to and in concert with the broader macro environment. Economic, technological, social, competitive, and regulatory forces can all determine the effectiveness of any organization’s marketing program.
2. In recent years, U.S. spending for health care has been highest among developed countries. However, per capita costs in the United States have slowed in recent years. The slowdown has been due to the economic recession, the Affordable Care Act, and drops in some major prescription drug costs.
3. Health care is a technologically driven industry that impacts quality, cost, information, and behavior. New technological advances dramatically affect the institutions and providers who deliver health care and determine how that care is delivered. In the short term, technological introductions have been found to have a complex effect on health care costs. Greater information power is now available in health care due to technology, and it has changed clinician and consumer behavior.
4. Technology is affecting consumer behavior. Consumers are now utilizing the Internet in ever-greater ways to access health information. Coupled with this use of the Internet for information is a greater level of transparency of health information regarding price and quality data on health care providers.
5. Transparency in health care is now a major factor. There are three forms: regulatory, which is either state sponsored or federal; self-motivated, in which the health care organizations are providing data on their own prices and/or quality; and third-party transparency sites, which are for-profit entities that provide information on health care organizations for the marketplace.
6. The changing demographics of the U.S. population represent significant opportunities for health care providers. Older consumers—a fast-growing segment—are major utilizers of health care services and products. Today, the over-65-year age segment is increasing at a faster rate than the population at large. Health care organizations are responding to capture their loyalty as well as to meet their clinical needs by restructuring the system in a population health environment.
7. Changing marketplace demographics related to gender, ethnicity, family composition, and race require health care providers to be more responsive to the needs and concerns of women. Hispanics are now the largest minority group in the U.S. population. In many metropolitan areas, Hispanics and African Americans represent a significant proportion of the market.
8. The competitive market can be defined as a pure competition, a monopolistic competition, an oligopoly, or a monopoly. The differences represent the number of sellers in the marketplace.
9. As the population has shifted to become more suburban, the number of hospitals in urban locations has declined at a dramatic rate, while new hospital openings have been primarily in wealthier suburbs.
10. As women become an increasing percentage of the workforce, the health care system has to respond with changing its service mix. There is a corresponding increase in the number of women in medical schools and among the health professions.
11. The percent of Americans availing themselves of complementary alternative medicine (CAM) has increased to almost 40 percent. Many health plans as well as Medicare and Medicaid cover some CAM treatments.
13. The prior movement to managed care is now shifting to the possibility of accountable care organizations, which model the structure of large health care systems, such as the Cleveland Clinic, Mayo Clinic, and the Geisinger Clinic, in which physicians are aligned under a single organization’s structure with the same set of incentives and fixed assets and whose goal is the delivery of quality care at the appropriate place in the system.
14. More Americans are turning to medical tourism. Although historically medical tourism implied going abroad to seek lower prices, in recent years it has also meant seeking care elsewhere within the United States, which is referred to as domestic tourism for similar reasons. In either case, many corporations have provided companies to seek care at other institutions through contracts that are established with other facilities or by providing incentives for their employees to travel to lower-cost facilities for treatment.
15. A wide variety of federal and state regulations exist that affect each aspect of the marketing mix. In recent years, major federal regulatory attention in health care has been paid to mergers and acquisitions of hospitals and providers by competitors. The government has provided some guidelines pertaining to health care mergers and acquisitions. In recent years, within the area of distribution and the increase of telemedicine, many states have begun to introduce legislation attempting to restrict its use.
16. The issue of provider referrals has also come under scrutiny of federal regulators. Although the laws are not exact, in general, it is illegal for physicians to refer to a facility in which they have a financial interest.
17. HIPAA regulations, which were passed to primarily affect the portability of patients’ insurance, also impact the marketing activities and communications that can be conducted without a patient’s consent.
