Four Ps of Marketing - St Josephs Hospital and Medical Center - Research Paper Example

Four P’s of Marketing Introduction of Organization and the Organization’s use of Four P’s For this project, I selected to work with St. Joseph‘s Hospital and Medical Center/ Barrow Neurological Institute. This hospital was established in 1962 in Phoenix, Arizona, with an aim of conducting neurological research as well as providing care for patients. Patients with a wide range of neurological conditions are treated here at Barrow, where some of these conditions include brain and spinal tumor, neuromuscular disorders as well as cerebrovascular conditions. The full address of the hospital is: Barrow Neurological Institute, 305 W. Thomas Road, Phoenix, AZ 85013 (602) 406-3000. The hospital’s website is: http://www.thebarrow.org/Neurological_Services/index.htm. The hospital offers services to all patients who have neurological problems; therefore, this becomes the first P as applied by the hospital. The market also tries to find affordable services to all their patients through the enactment of the affordable care Act. There are various pricing systems applied by the hospital in order to provide care for all their patients. Most of the patients who visit the facility are beneficiaries of Medicaid or use other insurance companies to settle their medical bills. The hospital basically targets any patient with neurological problems that may occur maybe through physical injury, birth, or through natural or artificial disaster. To create awareness to this group of people, the hospital uses various promotional platforms such as websites, social media, and print media as well as audio and visual media such as in radios and TVs. The four P’s are therefore very important in creating the marketing strategy for the hospital since, these will have to define what marketing strategies should be formulated and even implemented (Buchbinder, 2012). These strategies must be in line with what is missing in the hospital’s marketing strategies that hinder the best marketing practices from be carried out. To meet the hospital’s aims of providing the best healthcare to patients, the hospital must therefore be able to provide the best healthcare services to its patients at affordable prices, in the right place which should be at the hospital’s facilities and using the right kind of promotion that will reach the targeted customer to the hospital services. Therefore, the hospital can only meet its strategic plan when its marketing strategy succeeds through the four P’s of marketing. Areas for Improvement Related to the Four Ps The St. Joseph’s Hospital, Barrow seems to be more interested in some components of the four P’s more than the others. The hospital considers the first and the last P’s (Product and Promotion) to be more important to it as it is more geared to providing high quality services through its Barrow research section to meet the needs of its patients. It also considers creation of much awareness to the public about their specialization is much more important to enable the public to gain knowledge on what they do and the kinds of patients that they expect to receive. The hospital therefore has given relatively less consideration to the other two P’s (price and place) since they only set in when the patient is already admitted and a quality service has been determined to be offered to the patient within the hospital’s facilities or at a referral place. Rationale for Success and Current Market Position Currently, the hospital is a renowned center for neurological treatment and research which provides high quality services at fast rate and or affordable costs. There hospital is therefore free of much competition from other hospitals offering similar services (Madsen, 2012). The rationale for success for this hospital has always been based on their high quality services and the awareness through promotion that they provide to the public about the services they offer. The facility is well equipped with some of the best equipment for neurological surgery and the medical personnel also consist of highly qualified doctors. These then enable the hospital to offer high quality medical services to its clients at affordable prices, in the right place, through the use of the best promotional platform to provide information to their clients. The hospital then is able to fix an all round marketing strategy that will help in achieving the strategic goals of the hospital. Whenever the hospital wants to ensure that they implement the four P’s effectively, all the issues that will drive this plan well such as employing of the best doctors to provide the best services, uses the best media for promotion and even providing the best equipment in the hospital, must be fitted into the budgeting plans of the hospital. Through this way, the marketing strategy of this hospital will therefore influence the budgeting decisions through adjusting the budget to accommodate the strategy (Goi, 2009). The Difference between Real-World and Research According to research, there is much that the hospital is doing concerning the four P’s of marketing. These include the efforts that the hospital put in trying to provide the best quality services to its clients, equipping the hospital with some of the best medical equipment to facilitate medical practices as well as research in the best way possible, the hospital uses both the medical insurance billing services as well as non-insurance billing service to provide the best costs for their clients and the hospital also invests a lot in promotion services that act as awareness creation agents as well as providing information to the public about what the hospital deals in. All these are efforts aimed at achieving the four P’s of marketing, whereas in the real world, the hospital might not be having the knowledge about the four P’s of marketing. It only comes through a research that one carries out to determine whether this takes place within the organization or not. Conclusion St. Joseph’s Hospital Barrow Neurological Institute is a hospital that is aimed at providing treatment and research to patients with neurological related problems. The hospital has gained popularity nationwide due to its commitment to providing high quality services at affordable costs to its clients. These, the hospital management achieves through equipping the facility with best equipment and hiring high qualified doctors as well as using different promotional media to provide relevant information to its clients and the public generally. The four P’s are implemented through the marketing strategy which is meant to influence the budgeting decisions of the hospital in order to provide necessary funding to facilitate this plan. References Buchbinder, S. B. (2012). Introduction to Healthcare Management. New York : Willey John & Sons. Goi, C. (2009). A Review of Marketing Mix: 4Ps or More? International Journal of Marketing , 6-12. Madsen, L. (2012). Healthcare Business Intelligence: A Guide to Empowering Successful Data Reporting and Analytics. Chicago: McGraw-Hill Publishers. h quality serviality services t Read More