Strategic marketing to enhance revenues

Ankush Gupta -

Hospitals all over world provide health care services on 5 dimensions - curative, preventive, promotive, rehabilative and restorative and 3 levels - primary, secondary and tertiary care. More or less service line of hospitals is same including ambulatory care, in-patient services, diagnostic services and support services. Marketing a hospital is therefore an important part of its revenue generation. A hospital can apply two stragties to retain its clientele as well as increase number of patients:

• High investment, high risk strategy.
• Low investment, low risk strategy.

High investment, high risk strategies

1. Adding new services:

Infrastructure has to be developed.

New technology has to be acquired.

Staff has to be trained or recruited.

Acceptance by community can be doubtful even after a positive need and feasibility study.

2. Widening line of services offered to market:

ECG, EEG, EMG, USG, 2D ECHO and a range of diagnostics facilities can be added to increase the patient base and turnover at diagnostic wing.

3. Market segmentation of niche:

Market segmentation is done for a particular service after identifying the need of community. ECG is done as an OPD procedure for ambulatory patients, Screening test for health conscious patients, IPD procedures for inpatient and now it is conducted at doorstep of patient as a part of home care.

Low investment, low risk strategies

To maintain revenue generations and patient turnover, hospitals, which cannot afford high investment and high-risk strategy the option can lie in

New methods of service delivery.

Adding new features to existing service.

Increasing peripheral consultant referrals

New methods of service delivery have already been accepted and many organizations modified services delivery in the form of home care option. Some organizations that were not primarily into delivery of services they are now providing modified versions of existing service. Mobile cardiac ambulances and diagnostic vans are a few examples of this strategy.

Other strategies

Screening services:

Screening service is specifically aimed at preventive aspect of healthcare. Past few dcades have seen a rise in frequently undetected caes of diabetes, hypertension, blood cholesterol, visual and hearing problems. These minor problems slowly and slowly show transition to more acute problems like cardiac arrest and patient not only undergoes trauma but he also ends up paying huge bills for treatment.

Behaviour Modification programme:

Behavior modification programmes generally stress on health life style components like anti-smoking, anti-alcoholism, diet and nutrition programme. This behaviour modification programme can be conducted through small centers where investment will be low, hospital will enjoy credibility, advantages over unfamiliar single purpose agencies and brand trait.

Occupational Health Programmes:

Many production-oriented industries are at a high risk of occupational diseases. Such production units can be identified in the clientele zone, their diseases should be identified and a programme can be developed for prevention and treatment and then offered to industrial workers. Hospital can get huge clientele base due to uniqueness of programme through tie up with industrial units.

Adding new features to existing services is a “low risk low investment” strategy. Hospital can identify new methods of utilizing existing services and delilver new features with current market offerings. For example many of the tertiary care hospitals have a Physiotherapy department. Physiotherapy department can be coupled with sports medicine. With increasing interest in exercise and perhaps the likelihood that people will do more walking, running and cycling, there are bound to increase in number of sore muscles, joints, feet, knees etc. A physiotherapy department can also act as Medical Gymnasium (Physiotherapy and Sports Medicine) with installation of a few machines. In a medical Gymnasium the team of professionals can be: rInstructor - to provide guidance on type and quantum of exercise one can do. rDoctor with major in sport medicine rPhysiotherapist to treat minor ailments occurings as a result of exercise. rDietician to provide gudiance on type of diet to be eaten.

The major benefit of low risk low investment strategies is low competition as market is approached with a new offering. The only factor to be guarded against in case of service innovation is that encouraged by success of our offering to market, other hospitals will also come up with “Me-too service” which can be a copy or a better modified form of original offering. In such condition it is important for a hospital to maintain its leadership by continuous innovation and executive of aggressive marketing tools. In case a new service offering exhibits low acceptance or no acceptance by targeted segment than also hospital is at low risk because regular services are provided by the department along with the innovated service. Whereas in case of addition of a new department a hospital may loose a huge fund if it is not accepted by the community.

Innovation of services offered to market. Service innovation strategies can be planned and executed when hospitals are pro-active in identifying the health need that can arise in community. After generating an idea of service innovation, it is very important to translate that idea into a viable service offering to new clientele zone.

(The author is executive, HR, P D Hinduja Hospital, Mumbai)