Healthcare Marketing - Essay Example

?Healthcare Marketing: Antoine Charles is an extremely serious and professional public relations administrator at the local hospital. I found him to be a scintillating example of a workaholic who is not only very passionate about what he does for a living but also has a remarkable insight into elements which distinguish public relations (PR) from marketing. Throughout the interview he struck me as a kind of person who prefers to be quite measured in what is to be said and this characteristic was evident in all the questions he answered. Whenever I asked a question, he thought about it for a while and then gave me a comprehensive answer by addressing both the ups and down of each issue. He explained the role of public relations departments in hospitals to me in a very comprehensive and enlightening manner and yet managed to keep the discussion from going off the deep end. An example of this was his meticulous response to one question about the primary difference between marketing and PR. He responded by saying that though there exist clear differences between marketing and PR, still the line running between them is getting more and more blurred with time due to multiple factors. No matter how much confusing it gets to identify the line between the two domains, the differences continue to matter. It is important for a public administrator to acknowledge the ABCs of his/her job and what is required of him/her at work. It is essential to recognize the difference between communicating with investors or public and promoting the business. Often times when public administrators working at some healthcare facility are asked if they spend their time communicating with the public or advertising/marketing their healthcare setup, they answer that they are doing both which is where the line between PR and marketing gets blurred. Charles further illuminated me by identifying how the difference between PR and marketing matters more in large corporations or big hospitals than in small healthcare clinics. There is an entire department of people working at the hospitals to keep a check on release of earnings and communicating with the public which is why identifying the difference between PR and healthcare marketing matters more in big hospitals. Many times during his working at the local hospital, Charles mentioned how despite obvious differences marketing and PR at times became a function of each other and fueled each other. Based on his work experience, he told that at times, it gets practically difficult to separate one from another. Both marketing and PR are important areas as people working in both departments actually handle myriad activities to achieve same objectives and though the focus, strategies, and planning in both departments might differ, each is increasingly essential for the wellbeing of a hospital. Both PR and marketing require a different set of skills and focus on elements which stand in contrast to each other. “There are major differences between marketing and public relations that arise mainly from the view that the developments in relationship marketing and public relations are intruding in each other’s domain” (Stroh, 2007). Still for sustaining the growth and reputation of a big healthcare setup and because the awareness regarding the line of difference between PR and marketing is quite nebulous, it is critically important for the PR department to work in collaboration and concert with the marketing side. Separating these two departments from each other often becomes an issue when working in big hospitals but the need of the time is that both PR and marketing people know what is happening on the other side because not working in collaboration means weaker results due to unmet objectives. When I asked Charles about his opinion on how the set of skills and strategies for PR and marketing differ from each other, he began to discuss the differences by first claiming that both PR and marketing are management functions and both have the same primary goal to promote the business. They differ in what route they take to achieve the same goal of promoting the business. While PR does so by addressing the questions and handling the desires of the corporate social environment or the publics, marketing people at a hospital do so by taking care of the markets or the economic environment where the factor of profit is taken in due consideration while making all the important decisions about handling the needs and preferences of the public. “Marketing of health care service is an important factor that influences various factors concerning hospital services and performance” (Raggad, Almehsen, & Harahsheh, 2012, p. 26). So it becomes clear that one of the many things separating PR from marketing is the focus. While the focus of PR is the corporate social environment, that of marketing is the economic environment and both PR and marketing take different routes to further or advance their respective focuses. On being asked on what grounds could the publics be differed from the markets, Charles responded in the light of his experience that the first is made up of social groups who respond to an organization’s either good or bad consequences or influences exerted on them. The public or the social community always responds to the type of services and quality care provided by the local hospital in either a positive or negative manner. Publics are also different from the markets in respect that they participate in the management decisions in some ways which also serve their individual interests. PR professionals need to be highly expert in the communication skills and as some of them are, they also participate in the marketing functions to reach out to the markets. However, Charles revealed that such a tendency to function in a marketing department to communicate more with the markets than the social groups can badly affect the services of the PR professionals towards the social environment. When asked if it is still possible to differentiate PR from marketing in a big hospital like the one Charles work at as a PR administrator, it was answered that while at some places the practice of encouraging both PR and marketing professionals to work in collaboration is increasing, at others it is tried to keep the two departments as separate from each other as possible. This suggests that while drawing the line is possible even presently, many functions of PR and marketing ultimately get so mixed and inter-related that the line starts to become diffused at some point. As sometimes the tendency of the PR professionals to function in the marketing department to communicate with the markets to promote the reputation of the healthcare facility they work for can affect the services provided by them to the publics, some agencies disapprove the practice of mixing the two areas and stress on treating them as two separate entities based on the different environments they are structured to serve. Charles furthered the discussion by mentioning that while both PR and marketing professionals should strive to maintain the quality of the services provided by them to the publics and the markets respectively, it is imperative in the present age that they work closely to achieve the same objectives faster. To another question about what marketing is and what factors in particular separate it from PR, Charles replied that basically marketing is about making different decisions based on the factor of generating sales or profit as already mentioned. Generating profit by striving to make the healthcare services provided at the hospital a success is the job of the marketing professionals while PR deals with making the people feel happier about the services they are provided by the hospital and communicating with them to make them adapt to the business environment they live in. PR managers and specialists at the hospitals strive to maintain a favorable public image for the healthcare facility they work at by writing “material for media releases, planning and directing public relations programs, and raising funds for their organizations” (Bureau of Labor Statistics, 2012). While marketing is based on developing new healthcare services and products to address the diverse community needs, PR aims at addressing the publics’ behavioral change. Both, however, work to promote the hospital’s business. Summing up, Charles managed in unfolding some important details regarding the difference between PR and marketing from the point of view of a public relations administrator in this interview. He explained how the two departments are tried to be kept as separate from each other as possible at some hospitals despite the fact that their functions are closely aligned. He also stressed on the fact that though the focus of PR differs from marketing still it works better when integrated with marketing to achieve the desired objectives. The lines between both areas are so blurred now that what matters more is that the hospital administrators know what to communicate to which audience at the right time so as to promote the healthcare business. Both PR and marketing play critically important roles in running a hospital and since there is so much overlap between the two areas presently, more important thing is to not get too focused on the differences but knowing which tools to use to make both PR and marketing a success. References: Bureau of Labor Statistics. (2012, Mar 29). Public Relations Managers and Specialists. Retrieved from http://www.bls.gov/ooh/management/public-relations-managers-and-specialists.htm Raggad, M.A., Almehsen, M.A.S., & Harahsheh, O.M.M. (2012). Marketing Effectiveness and Health Care Performance: A Study of Private Hospitals in Jordan. European Journal of Economics, Finance and Administrative Sciences, (46), 26-40. Stroh, U. (2007). The conundrum of public relations versus marketing: clarifying the differences in terms of relationship management. Prism, 5(1). Retrieved from http://www.prismjournal.org/fileadmin/Praxis/Files/Journal_Files/Stroh.pdf Read More