Marketing Strategies of Corporate Hospitals

Abstract

[Hospital is the organization that dreams up an idea of service offering (treatment), which will satisfy the customer’s (patient’s) expectations (of getting cured). The service is a combination of tangible and intangible aspect with the intangible aspect dominating the tangible aspect. A hospital offers an intangible service called health care, characterized by inseparability, intangibility, variability, perishability, and simultaneity.India is substantially under-invested in healthcare with 17% of the world's population, but only 6% of the beds. Meager public healthcare spending in India presents a big investment opportunity for private players. The growth in now focused on fast expansion into tier II & III cities in the country. The growth drivers are:• The services sector (which accounts for 55 per cent of GDP) will grow as economy is poised for stable growth of over 5%. Goldman Sachs estimates that the Indian economy is likely to grow at five per cent annually for the next 45 years. • The total expenditure on health per capita in India has increased from $19 in 2000 to $36 (at average exchange rates) in 2005. This incremental spending per capita was largely accounted for by private spending rather than public (government) spending (per capita spending by government increased from $ 4 to $ 7 during the same period).• It is predicted that medical tourism will grow into a 2 billion US$ (dollar) business by 2014. Patients are coming from neighboring countries (Sri Lanka, Nepal, Bangladesh, Afghanistan and Pakistan), as well from countries like UK, the US and the Middle East.NEED FOR THE STUDYThe corporate hospitals contribute about 7% of bed capacity. The increased incidence of chronic lifestyle diseases and substandard quality of care in public hospitals has forced even the lower middle class patients to spend beyond their means. In the last few years; the shift of the clientele to corporate hospitals has been overwhelming. The emergence of corporate hospitals as favored centers of health care for foreigners is another positive development. All these developments are posing challenges to the corporate hospitals to maintain high standard in delivery of services to improve and retain image. They require operational excellence and marketing effectiveness, to attract patients, and satisfy them.The review leads to the following conclusions:• Hospital should have marketing orientation to succeed. • Total quality management for improving and delivering quality services is important.• Patient satisfaction and feedback should be major concerns. Equally important is employee satisfaction and feedback. • The benefits like brand equity and profitability can be measured.