The United Kingdom Health Care University, Current State of Heath Care Industry - Case Study Example

9-3-2008 Multi Channel Merchandising Introduction: The retailers in any commodity or service business use various service channels to market their products. A distribution channel forms the middleman between the manufacturer and customer. Distribution is all about getting your product/service to the right people at the right time with special consideration for profit and effectiveness. The retailers in UK utilize different distribution channels to market their products and service. These distribution channels range from ordinary stores to high online marketing. The type of distribution channel adopted may also vary with the product or service. In this report, the case study is chosen to a health care hospital, a service industry. UK Health Care University: The Heath care facility chosen for the case study is UK Health care, one among the best in UK. UK HealthCare is the patient care enterprise of University of Kentucky Medical Center. UK HealthCare consists of the medical, nursing, health sciences, public health, dental and pharmacy patient care activities of the University of Kentucky in Lexington, Kentucky, and in several off-site locations. It has one among the best health care facilities in the world. It utilizes the expertise of various faculty of University to provide the best possible service to its patients. The physicians, residents, staff and students take pride in achieving excellence in patient care, education, and research and community service. With all its world class facilities, it provides the most advanced patient care and serves as an information resource for the whole industry. UK HealthCare is part of an academic medical center that has a thriving research community. Medical advances are frequently made in a wide variety of health care disciplines. All the elements of UK HealthCare's strategic plan for the future focus on one ambitious goal: achieving Top 20 status among all academic medical centers nationwide. UK HealthCare is committed to providing the highest-quality and safest patient care possible.UK health care is becoming a medical destination where the patients can seek the best in specialty and subspecialty care. Their demand for health care is ever growing within the industry. UK HealthCare is more than just a hospital and a physician practice. As a major health resource for the region and the state, it is an organization dedicated to providing the most advanced and comprehensive patient care underpinned by cutting-edge medical research and the education and training of tomorrow's health professionals. UK HealthCare facilities include UK Chandler Hospital, Kentucky Children's Hospital, UK HealthCare East, Kentucky Clinic, Polk-Dalton Clinic, Kentucky Clinic South, 80 specialized clinics, 143 outreach programs, and a team of 6,000 physicians, nurses, pharmacists and health care workers all dedicated to patient health. It includes some of the highly acclaimed centers, including the Center for Advanced Surgery, Minimally Invasive Surgery Center, Radiation treatment facilities and Transplant Center. The unique capabilities of this health care facility is it ability to combine multispeciality group to enable care providers of UK HealthCare to provide multidisciplinary teams for patient care. Such teams are useful for managing complex medical and surgical cases. The Hospital also pioneers in various departments of health care and serve as a resource center for the local health care community. It attracts patients from many countries with its state of art facilities and the capability to treat any health care problems. Current State of Industry: In a 2007 report by the Commonwealth Fund, the UK was ranked first among six developed countries for its provision of healthcare, in relation to quality of care, access, effectiveness and efficiency. Healthcare services have contributed to some dramatic improvements in the health of people in England and Wales over the last 20 years. This is attributed to the improvements in health care facilities with new technologies. The overall health of the population also continues to improve. People are living longer and infant mortality is falling. All these facts clearly indicate the betterment of the facilities in the health care industry. In fact some of the UK hospitals provide the best health care facilities in the world. It is clear that healthcare is improving and that most patients are positive, but there remain challenges. Still the industry lags behind in some of the aspects of health care. With the state of art facilities in many hospitals, the cost of treatment in these industries is also ever rising. In fact, many UK people opt for treatment outside their national boundaries because of the high cost and waiting times. Also the number of patients accessing these health care facilities in UK from other nations is also on the decline. This also has been attributed to the high cost of medical treatment compared to the nominal rates in many developing nations. Existing Distribution Channels: Most UK hospitals provide only conventional distribution channels which also contribute to their failure. They still go in for direct, telephone or online retailing of their service. In current industry trend of globalization and high competition these channels are not sufficient. The developing nations have started to get this state of art facilities and they in course of time may out run their UK counterparts due to their extremely low cost medical facilities. In direct channel, both in patients and out patients approach the hospital directly for treatment. This is the major channel of retailing. This includes patients in emergency, people seeking appointment and so on. In telephone retailing, people get their appointments with specific doctors. The online facility provides the patients with wide range of facilities. It provides them opportunity to consult doctors without direct approach within limitations. It also helps them to fix appointment. The online facilities also provide the hospital with an opportunity to advertise the state of art facilities they have and various other quality systems of the health care facilities. The UK health care utilizes all the three conventional retailing channels described above. But this doesn't in anyway attract the foreign patients in spite of the state of art facilities they have. For the last two decades the number of foreign patients in UK has been on the decline. This is attributed to the high cost and the waiting time required in UK. The rise in medical facilities in many developing nations like India, China, Singapore and so on has taken advantage of this weakness of UK hospitals. The globalization has started to work in favour of these nations and they have started to outsource their medical facilities and they attract many foreign customers owing to their cheapness and timeliness. These foreign hospitals attract patients by their offer packages which are at extremely low cost. They also attach other tourism offers along with the medical package and this in recent times has worked to greater extent in favour of these developing nations. Hence it is high time for UK health care facility to identify this new distribution channel to retail their service to attract foreign customers. The New Channel: Medical Tourism Medical tourism is a term initially coined by travel agencies and the mass media to describe the rapidly-growing practice of traveling across international borders to obtain health care. Many factors have led to the increasing popularity of medical travel. The high cost of health care, long wait times for certain procedures in developed nations, the ease and affordability of international travel, and improvements in both technology and standards of care in many developing countries have led to an increase in the number of medical tourism in recent years. Such services typically include elective procedures as well as complex specialized surgeries such as joint replacement, cardiac surgery, dental surgery, and cosmetic surgeries Western patients are increasingly traveling to developing countries for health care and developing countries are increasingly offering their skills and facilities to paying foreign customers. With a large pool of highly trained doctors and low treatment prices, healthcare many developing nations are trying to replicate their success in software outsourcing. Many say that in future it is not just cost but competency that will prove to be major factor in deciding potential medical tourism centre of attraction. The developed nations must take note of this for developing medical tourism in their nations in the future. This international trade in medical services has huge economic potential for developing countries and serious implications for health care across the globe The medical tourism has been viewed as the retail channel of the future. The leisure aspect associate with these medical tours provides a great advantage to the health care facilities who want to expand their foreign customer share. At the same time prospective medical tourism patients need to keep in mind the extra cost of travel and accommodations when deciding on treatment locations. The medical tourism provides an alternative source of treatment for those who cannot afford the high cost of medical facilities in their country. Alternatively it can be used by developed nations to attract potential customers who seek world care facilities who have no problem with the cost of treatment. These people go in search of medical treatment to developed nations because of lack or insufficiency of medical facilities in their nations. Additionally in some nations, patients are finding that insurance either does not cover orthopedic surgery (such as knee/hip replacement) or imposes unreasonable restrictions on the choice of the facility, surgeon, or prosthetics to be used. Also in some developed nations that operate public health-care systems are often so taxed that it can take considerable time to get non-urgent medical care. In this case people would decide in favour if medical tourism. Health tourism providers have developed as intermediaries to unite potential medical tourists with provider hospitals and other organisations. Companies are beginning to offer global health care options that will enable potential patients to access world health care at a fraction of the cost of domestic care. Companies that focus on medical value travel typically provide nurse case managers to assist patients with pre- and post-travel medical issues. They also help provide resources for follow-up care upon the patient's return. Further the travel to calm and quiet tourist spots post treatment, provides the patients with an option for recreation. The tour provides them a good feel at heart and ensures faster return to normal state. This has been true in many emergency cases of heart and liver surgeries. Also the tie ups maintained by some hospitals with the tourist agencies also brings down this tourism cost to greater extent than would have been cost if a customer opts for touring separately. A large boon to medical travel is convenience and speed of travel to this medical tourism centers. With ever increasing speed of travel, medical tourism certainly holds a major draw of business for future. With the large number of advantages, there also remain a number of risks associated with medical travel. The potential customer before deciding on medical centers would look at the political sate of the country. They would also look into whether any epidemic has hit the country in recent years. In this case developed nations possess a huge advantage over developing countries. The relatively stable political atmosphere and high protective measures against epidemics in developed nations provide a great prospect for medical tour in developed countries in the future. The quality of post-operative care can also vary dramatically, depending on the hospital and country, and may be different from home nation. By traveling outside their home country for medical care, medical tourists may encounter unfamiliar ethical and legal issues. The limited nature of litigation in non-US countries is one reason for the lower cost of care overseas. In spite of all these negative factors, medical tourism certainly holds a future in health care. The developing nations have already started to thrive on it. At the same there is no doubt that developed nations are also having many new prospects in this new trend of health care. Business Case for UK health Care: As with other hospitals in developed nations, medical tourism offers a good retail channel for UK health care University. In order to venture into this new retail channel the UK Health care has to take very little number of steps. But it is sure to enjoy more number of fruits in the future. First hand it has to make contractual agreements with intermediaries who have greater track record of attracting many customers. These intermediary companies vary typically with the extent of their work. Some just introduce the customers whereas the others provide follow up of the patient post treatment. The type of intermediary should be decided based on the Hospitals requirement. It also has to sign a kind of memorandum of understanding with a tourist agency for post treatment sight seeing of potential customers. The overall cost for the customer through opting for this package must be very less compared to individual means. Also the tourist spots must be advocated by the hospital based on the level of complication of patient's medical conditions. Surely the cost of treatment in UK health care is going to be high compared to other developing nations. Hence the bottom line of their business must be facilities and safety of treatment. For this the UK health care has to constantly keep its medical facilities updated constantly. The safety and quality norms adopted should be the best in the industry. They should never compromise with these factors if they want to have any leadership in this retail channel. While venturing into medical tourism, one of the most important factors to be kept in mind is accreditation. Without proper accreditation it is very difficult to serve foreign markets. For example, the Indian healthcare industry has failed to impress the British government's National Health Service (NHS) to outsource its patients to India. Sources attribute this to Indian hospitals' lacking accreditation from Joint Commission on Accreditation of Healthcare Organisations (JCAHO). This holds good for UK health care hospital has well. Some of the accreditation boards that UK health care can approach are The Society for International Healthcare Accreditation (SOFIHA) and HealthCare Tourism International. Conclusion: The retail channel proposed is sure to provide the medical industry with multimillion dollar businesses in the future. With the globalization and shrinkage of world due to fast transport, in very near future, medical tourism is going to hold the key for the success of any health care facility in the future. The UK health care Hospital recognizing this potential of medical tourism must venture into this new retail sector to hold a share of foreign customers. In future, surely the cost alone won't be defining the success of medical tourism. It is going to be the Quality of treatment that is going to be the deciding factor in the success of a health care facility in medical tourism. Though the medical tourism holds a great prospect, it depends on individual health care facilities approach towards the Quality that determines their success. Works Cited "About UK HealthCare".UK HealthCare online.2008. UK HealthCare University.10 May. 2008< http://www.ukhealthcare.uky.edu/about/index.htm > Bookman, Milica Zarkovic and Bookman, Karla R.Medical Tourism in Developing Countries. Hampshire:Palgrave Macmillan,2007 Elvis, Igor. Legal And Ethical Issues In Medical Tourism 9 May, 2008. My Views and Reviews. 10 May. 2008 Hutchinson, Becca. "Medical tourism growing worldwide". UDaily. July 2005 University of Delaware.10 May. 2008 Louis, W. Stern et al.Marketing Channels. New Jersey : Prentice-Hall, 2006 Syed, Falaknaaz.. "UK spikes India's medical tourism dream". Express Health Care Management.16 Apr.2004. ' Read More