Healthcare is a basic human need; and hospitals are the institutions, which cater to that need. There is no denying the fact that hospitals do need marketing, especially in the present day context, when healthcare is seen as an industry and when the competition is getting increasingly tougher with mushrooming private players. Customer focus has become primarily important in order to improve the bottom-line (profit/surplus). As a matter of fact, financial success of a hospital often depends on its marketing ability.
But the ethicists have always raised brows on this subject. Is marketing a healthcare institution ethical? What are the ethical standards that must be maintained while marketing the hospital services? Apparently, there is a huge knowledge gap between the providers and the customers (patients) in case of medicine. Hence these concerns are valid; and there is need of a strong healthcare marketing ethics model.
In case of hospitals, patients’ welfare should always be the prime motive, and not the profit. Marketing should never lead a patient to accept unnecessary service/s, irrespective of the costs or risks involved. A supplier (hospital)-induced demand for unnecessary services must be vehemently discouraged in healthcare. For instance, including X-ray as a part of routine check-up procedure or promoting cosmetic surgeries etc.
Advertisements should never be misleading, whether of any new equipment employed or of any new facility or service, introduced at experimental level. The best marketing is marketing that educates, i.e. letting people know what’s true; being honest and helping them to make an informed choice.
Customers are the best marketing agents that an organization can secure; and this can be achieved only by means of building up the confidence in them that their welfare is being given highest priority. This confidence further can be instilled only by means of offering honest and sincere services to them. The marketing team in a hospital must concentrate on relationship management with customers, aimed at improving their satisfaction level.
The 4P of marketing must be integrated with the 4Cs, i.e. Product as Customer solution, Price as Customer Cost, Place as Convenience to Customer and Promotion as Customer Communication. A satisfied customer base automatically improves the market share and consequently, the profit.