What Kind of Business Is Healthcare
If health care is a business, why as an industry are there so many organic problems? Could these organic problems be as simple as there are too many people making decisions and there is no clear vision for the future of the industry? Have you ever had the opportunity to go to a healthcare conference? There are many people teaching us about best practices, quality improvement, clinical pathways, and customer satisfaction, but who is in charge and who can make these changes?
The reality is that there is no one playing nice in the sandbox. Remember when a child was told by the mom please share the shovel and pail when at the playground with the other children? As adults, we need to share or at least come to some common ground. The reality is that hospital administrators are constantly “negotiating” in their communications; with the physicians, and with CMS and other state and local regulators, and of course, labor unions, and their own management team. The understanding needs to be that all of these elements are a TEAM and we need each other to be successful.
Close your eyes and “pretend” that you are a Marketing Manager in a fortune 500 company and need to attract customers and grow profits. We start with the definition of business marketing, which is to identify with meeting human and social needs, or another definition for business marketing is to meet the needs of profitability. What is the marketing strategy of healthcare? We have all taken company surveys for example; a new car, a restaurant, a computer, and so on. The goal of most companies is to try to achieve perfect scores. Perfection is the goal and achieving a four out of five is not good enough for most organizations. In healthcare, the logic is to use the mean score as a benchmark, which makes the mean the acceptable score in many facilities. The logic is then that the facility is hitting the norm and there are no critical issues necessitating making changes.
