Study Document
Health Care -- Strategic Planning and Marketing Essay
Pages:2 (580 words)
Sources:4
Subject:Ethics
Topic:Ethics In Healthcare
Document Type:Essay
Document:#62159050
Health Care -- Strategic Planning and Marketing
Strategic planning and marketing often wed customer-oriented issues with broader issues of public health, morality and survival in a highly competitive market. Consequently, a key issue set forth by the American Hospital Association and an issue of strategic planning/marketing are often two sides of the same coin. This work addresses the customer-oriented issues of Diversity and Emergency Planning that are mirrored in two key issues advanced by the AHA. These two issues are articulated in the first part of this work and answered in the second part of this work.
Customer-Oriented Strategic Plan
Diversity
American society is increasingly ethnically diverse due to immigration, relocation, birth rates and other factors. Consequently, a 250-bed community hospital must hone its sensitivity to resulting changes in community health needs. In addition, there is a high level of competition among hospitals that requires sensitive, targeted marketing to attract diverse groups. A very good example of responsive marketing and health care is discussed in A neighborhood of nations by Noonan and Savolaine (Noonan & Savolaine, 2001). The skill and success of that community hospital's plan shows that at least a hybrid of its strategy should be followed for marketing and for capably serving a hospital's community.
Emergency Planning
Though the terrorist attacks of 9/11 awakened the United States from some of its complacency, our public health system and the public/private health departments of the United States still cannot adequately deal with a major bioterrorist attack. Our health care system was not designed to deal with it, our medical personnel are not trained or experienced enough to deal with it and we have not devoted enough political muscle and money to redesigning, re-educating and restructuring so the health care system…
Sample Source(s) Used
Issues or Opportunities
Eliminating Racial and Ethnic Disparities
As the American Hospital Association states, "Addressing disparities is no longer just about morality, ethics and social justice: It is essential for performance excellence and improved community health" (American Hospital Association, 2012). A multi-faceted approach to discerning, accommodating and marketing for diversity would certainly include the thoughtful collection and examination of diversity data to define target ethnic markets and specific steps tailored to those markets, as described in Noonan's and Savolaine's article. Studying obstetrical discharge data for ethnicity and outright asking physicians for specific information about the ethnicity of their patients is a sensible approach to determining the community's ethnic composition. In addition, the hospital zip code's CNI data for "five factors long known to contribute to health need - income, culture/language, education, housing status, and insurance coverage" (Anonymous, 2011) should be defined and collected. After that data is collected, it should be studied to define the community's major ethnic target groups. After determining the target groups, the hospital's services should be marketed directly