HEALTH CARE MARKETING

Health Care Marketing

Health Care Marketing

Introduction

Marketing is a major component for most business in the United States but is only just beginning to take hold in the healthcare field. Within the healthcare arena the concepts of marketing has taken a long time to develop. In the late 1970s Evanston Hospital in Illinois was the first hospital to hire a marketing person for healthcare. We are now in the early 21st Century and healthcare marketing is going full steam ahead. The purpose of this essay is to examine some of the healthcare marketing techniques and its possible impact on healthcare workers.

General Opinion

I have only been working in the healthcare industry for about seven years. Of the seven years, I worked five of them in one large medical centre in a local town. Marketing was never a part of my vocabulary until recently. I honestly didn't pay too much attention to advertising campaigns until I started working for Saint Francis Medical Centre in Cape Girardeau, Missouri. Mass communication was and still is a major marketing technique that Saint Francis uses. A day doesn't goes by that you will not see the “Medical Minute” spot on the local television stations. Shortly after Saint Francis started using this technique, three other local hospitals developed their own television campaigns. Even though some people may get tired of the constant bombardment of these TV commercials, I believe that they may save lives as well as promote more business for the hospitals. As quoted by (Beckham 2001), a 46-year old male wrote to a local hospital thanking them for saving his life through their TV campaign on the signs of heart attacks. From this campaign, this individual was able to identify that he was having a heart attack at which time he went straight to the emergency room.

Techniques

Technique that Saint Francis used was the “We Care” campaigns. According to Strunk Cunningham (2002) the “We Care” campaign was listed under the section “What Hasn't Worked” of his article. Beckham claimed that consumers are more concerned with competence and results than whether the hospital cares or not. In my opinion, I would have to agree with this concept. Yes, Saint Francis did care, but is the service good? I believe that the TV campaigns are more successful as a marketing tool than wearing buttons reading “We Care.”

Are Current Marketing Techniques Affecting Consumer Trends? The answer to this question ...