Healthcare Marketing - Research Paper Example

Healthcare Marketing Healthcare Marketing Introduction Healthcare marketing is a serious issue in the United s. Healthcare is a vital service and in the context of healthcare insurance, marketing the product is a matter of creating reliable delivery to the users and making sure that that the consumes are happy with the service. The affordable healthcare act, which is commonly known as Obama Care, has introduced a whole lot of new opportunities as well as hurdles for health marketers and insurance providers. However, even as the Affordable Healthcare continues to elicit divergent views as to how it will affect the healthcare delivery in the United States, there are some success factors that when considered will lead to success, the kind of success that leads to happy healthcare consumers, happy healthcare marketers and even happy providers. Innovation Regardless of the market, innovation is a major part of healthcare marketing. Healthcare providers need to know that the healthcare market is a very divergent market with needs being as many as the number of customers in the market. Each individual, each family, each community has different needs from those of the next person, next family and the neighboring community. Unlike other businesses such as manufacturing businesses that can manufacture just a small range of products which will then serve the entire community, healthcare providers have to deal products that serve individual unique needs of the customer and be able to satisfy each person. Buying healthcare is not like buying piece of manufactured product. The healthcare needs of each individual are almost as unique as their DNA and for such an individual to be satisfied, he or she must get a healthcare product that serves these needs. What is useful for one person does not work for the next person (Maxwell, 2012). The problem in this case is to make sure that these individuals are served while the providers are able to make sustainable profits. This conflict between meeting the individual healthcare needs of every individual and the cost of meeting these individual needs is what requires innovative products. In this case, it is best to remember that it is highly difficult to determine the healthcare cost of an individual because it is not easy to tell what kind of health treatment the person may require in the future. In this case, if it is not easy to determine the future treatment needs of an individual, it is not easy to foretell the future treatment cost for a group of customers, yet, this is the whole point upon which the development of the healthcare products is made. Healthcare insurance works by pooling the future healthcare risks for all the customers who have bought an insurance product from a specific provider. The idea is to ensure that the pool if risk can be managed with a certain amount of fund and then distributing this to all the customers. This is not easy, even with the use of actuarial science. After all, the modern way of marketing healthcare does not consider the risk factors that used to be considered in the past. Agility In healthcare marketing, agility is almost inevitable if the product is going to be successful. Agility, in the context of healthcare marketing can be defined as innovation in progress. As discussed above, innovation is a major sues factor. While innovation is important, it has to be constant innovation process that responds to changes in the market. As has been determined, the health needs of each individual are unique. It is also better to note that these needs are not just unique, they are also dynamic, in that they keep changing over time. The healthcare needs of an individual are not going to be the same tomorrow. As people go through their life, such as changing career, changing environment if they move from one home or neighborhood to another, their healthcare needs seem to change. Needless to mention, even as the healthcare needs of an individual change, the healthcare needs of the larger society changes. Keeping up with these changes requires an agile product development as well as marketing strategy for healthcare products. This is extremely important for any healthcare providers and those who are able to do this are able to have much more success in the market. This success is not just in terms of revenues, but also in terms of how they are able to serve their clientele. Gone are the days when healthcare providers as well as healthcare insurance providers used to sell health insurance to an individual and in the event of a sickness the customer could only be treated if their premiums were able to cover the level of cost needed for that particular treatment. The modern trend that has emerged is the case where the customer is treated, regardless of cost. In fact, this the whole point of the affordable healthcare that has been implemented by the Obama administration. It intends to make sure that no healthcare insurance customer is ever turned down for treatment because their premiums are too low to cover their treatment. As the Obama Care becomes more popular, even private insurers and providers will have to take up their attitudes towards healthcare. According to O’Brien (2014) the Affordable Healthcare act may affect the process both in the current time and in the future. In the future, as the number of old age people increases, demand will increase thus possibly pushing the prices up. Most low income earners are likely to be persuaded t buy this product for the reason that it covers everything and this gives them confidence that when they need the treatment, they will not be turned down because their premiums are not enough to cover the treatment. Reliability Reliability is another issue that must be considered in healthcare marketing. Consumers want to be guaranteed that if they buy a healthcare insurance product, this product will be helpful to them even twenty or more years later. This then becomes a major success factor that must be considered. Because of the events that have happened to individual with regard to such issues as savings funds where individuals have invested in a retirement fund only to be told later that they cannot access this, there is fear among users that if they contribute to healthcare for some years, they may eventually not be able to access the insurance when they need it. This creates fear and suspicion among users and many people feel that it might be futile to invest in a healthcare insurance plan. Those firms which will be able to create confidence in their product through repeated reliability will be the most successful. Conclusion There is a need to make sure that people are well protected from the many health risks. Heath is not just an expensive affair for most individual, it is also absolutely necessary and impairs the quality of life not just for the individual who is in need of treatment bust also for his or her family and friends who have to watch as such a person suffers in pain because they cannot afford healthcare. Modern healthcare marketing has to take care of this issue and it is necessary to make sure that there is a proper way to make healthcare affordable but also sustainable. This is going to be driving force for healthcare marketing both in the near future as well as in the far future and it is necessary for all stakeholders, right from the marketers to the policy makers to be concerned about this. References Maxwell, O. (2012). Making Healthcare Work, A Look at the odern Healthcarre Market. New York, NY: Pearson. O’Brien, B. (2014, March 27). How Will Obamacare Affect Health Care Prices? Retrieved December 03, 2014, from http://urbanmilwaukee.com/2014/03/27/how-will-obamacare-affect-health-care-prices/ Read More