health services marketing paper

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Marketing Strategy of New York-Presbyterian Hospital

Introduction

Healthcare in the contemporary world is undergoing major changes and healthcare providers need to change accordingly in order to remain in business. One of the forces driving healthcare in the present world is marketing where professionals have intensified their campaigns in a bid to get more clients which more or less translate to more revenue for the healthcare facility. One of the healthcare providers that is embracing this shift in marketing it the New York-Presbyterian Hospital. The hospital was formed when two hospitals, New York and Presbyterian, entered a merger to form one healthcare facility. The merger was finalized in 1998 and since then the hospital has grown to encompass several areas in the New York, Connecticut and New Jersey States. Currently, the facility boasts of 32 hospitals, 12 home healthcare agencies, more than 90 ambulatory care centres, support buildings and six long-term facilities. When the two previous hospitals decided to merge, they had some goals which included improving healthcare delivery, reduced costs of healthcare services and enhanced clinical services for the clients visiting the facility.

Current Trends in Healthcare

Owing to the competitive nature of healthcare facilities in the contemporary world, marketing strategies need to be designed to match the expectations of clients and the healthcare field. In today’s healthcare landscape, three major trends are being used and replicated by various facilities and since most of these facilities are sticking to them, it shows that they are effective. The first trend is putting the patient or the client first. Patients and clients seeking healthcare services are now more empowered than ever, they have access to a vast amount of information due to the Internet of Things (IoT), which has made information practically available to anyone that can access the internet. Healthcare providers should, therefore, tailor-make their services to suit the expectations of their clients and patients so that they keep coming back or refer others to the facility. Furthermore, healthcare providers are now consolidating their organizations through mergers, partnerships and acquisition of the competition. Mergers and partnerships are occurring now at a faster rate than ever witnessed before and this has brought many opportunities and a few challenges to healthcare providers. Some of the challenges that come with mergers is that the competition grows stronger and hence, a healthcare facility has to intensify its marketing strategy to ensure that it remains productive. The other challenge is that a healthcare facility will be forced to spend more revenue on branding as image is a large component in creating customer trust. Finally, the other trend that is influencing healthcare is the ease of communication which makes it easier for patients to communicate with one another (Marketing Strategy 260). Therefore, a healthcare facility can either benefit from positive reviews, hence, a facility has to ensure that the patients and clients who have visited the facility are talking positive things about their experience there. It is for this reason that the New York-Presbyterian Hospital needs to develop a marketing strategy that is akin to the one that will be discussed in the succeeding paragraphs.

Marketing Strategy

Patients are central to the success of any healthcare facility and therefore, New York-Presbyterian Hospital needs to ensure that the patient is the core of its marketing strategy. Placing the patient at the centre of the marketing initiative entails prioritizing the needs and expectations of the patients visiting the facility. The patients and their families should feel welcomed and their needs attended to. All marketing strategies should be directed at making the patients feel welcomed and at the end of the service, feel that their expectations and needs have been fulfilled (Alkhateeb & Minh 3). To this end, marketing campaigns should feature patients enjoying the healthcare services being provided at the hospital; the patients should be portrayed as being happy and enjoying the care that they are receiving at New York-Presbyterian Hospital.

For a marketing strategy to be effective, all departments in the hospital need to project one strong image. The marketing department should, therefore, involve all the departments in the hospital in designing a strategy that will be taken up once the marketing campaign is begun. Involving all the departments will allow the hospital to project a cohesive brand image which will allow all the healthcare professionals in the facility to accomplish the set goals and objectives (Marketing Strategy 271).

Marketing should utilize the available tools and technology in order to enhance its effectiveness. In the contemporary world of technological advancements, the hospital can utilize the various social media applications to reach to a wider clientele base (Alkhateeb & Minh 5). These tools which are often readily and cheaply available will aid the marketing department in reaching a lot of clients using the least amount of money and effort.

Finally, the hospital should follow up on its patients after they have been discharged or received a healthcare service. Follow up is a strong component of marketing as it will always remind the client of the awesome service that they received at the facility and hence, they will always be aware of the hospital and once they feel that they need a service, they will certainly come back to the facility (Marketing Strategy 259).

Impact of Marketing

Marketing is one of the best ways to ensure that a healthcare facility remains profitable since it provides a steady stream of clients who in turn provide revenue. Therefore, marketing will ensure that New York-Presbyterian Hospital remains profitable and in the long run, expand into other new areas. Furthermore, since marketing involves advertising the skills of the healthcare professionals working at the facility, skilled professionals will be attracted to work at the facility. Having skilled professionals will increase service delivery which in turn will enhance the image of the hospital (Palmatier 27).

Evaluation of the Marketing Strategy

Once a marketing strategy has been designed and implemented, it is important to develop a strategy for evaluating the effectiveness of the campaign. The evaluation could involve the number of patients visiting the facility, revenue collected, number of repeat visits, quality of reviews that the facility gets from its previous patients and the number of new patients being referred to the facility among other factors.

To ensure that the marketing strategy is working, the hospital could do a financial evaluation which will aid in determining the amount of revenue collected which can then be compared to the money collected before the marketing strategy was rolled out. Furthermore, the number of patients visiting the facility can help the marketing department know whether the marketing strategy is effective. As mentioned in the preceding paragraphs, patients are core to the success of a healthcare facility and hence, the higher the number of patients visiting the facility, the better the facility runs and hence, points to the success of the marketing strategy (Muhadi & Winda 2).

Works Cited

Alkhateeb, Fadi M., and Minh-Nguyen Do. "Healthcare Relationship Marketing: Strategy, Design, and Measurement." International Journal of Pharmaceutical and Healthcare Marketing, vol. 7, no. 1, 2013, pp. 2-5.

Muhadi, Muhadi, and Winda Lusia. "Analysis Of Marketing Strategy And Marketing Mix On New Patient Visit Of Specialistic Polyclinic." Proceedings of the 2nd International Symposium of Public Health, 2017, pp. 1-2.

Palmatier, Robert W., and Shrihari Sridhar. "Marketing Strategy: A First Principles Approach." Marketing Strategy, 2017, pp. 1-30.

---. "Marketing Strategy: Implementing Marketing Principles and Data Analytics." Marketing Strategy, 2017, pp. 259-278.