Health care initially was one of the areas most tightly regulated by the state. This is due to the fact that services and programs implemented in the health care system are directly related to human health and life. Strict government regulation of health care institutions, including management and pricing, attempts made, including in developed countries, to fully finance health care through the state budget, led to a more recent and incomplete introduction of modern methods and management techniques, including marketing.
Healthcare marketing has its own distinctive features related to the specifics of consumer demand and the market for medical goods and services. Its capabilities are largely due to the form of financing health care and payment for medical services (private, insurance, public), as well as the ownership of enterprises producing medical goods and providing medical services (private, municipal, state, charitable foundations, etc.).
Treatment-and-prophylactic institutions – providers of medical services, on the one hand, and elements of a market infrastructure where medical care is implemented and consumed, on the other. The market for medical services is a type of specific market where these services are offered and consumed. Marketing intermediaries are organizations that help the producer of goods and services in promoting, marketing and distributing their products among customers, identifying specific markets, providing communication between the producer and the consumer.
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Marketing of medical services (including recreational activities) is important for the formation of motivation among the population to promote health and an appropriate lifestyle, to create the image of a healthy person, a healthy lifestyle system.
The increase in the number of medical institutions, caused by the growing demand for their services, as well as the growing profitability of the latter due to the use of modern management methods and new technologies, implies the free choice of their services by the consumer, and therefore customers place higher demands on the quality of services and services. In turn, health care institutions are forced to more often resort to marketing tools in order to understand the needs of consumers not only in terms of treatment, but also maintenance, and developing a competitive strategy for the development of their enterprise.
One of the types of marketing strategy in modern health care should also be a strategy of socio-ethical marketing, which involves treatment and preventive activities, the sale of goods and services for certain special groups of the population (retirees, war and labor veterans, blockade, single, low-income, large families, persons with socially significant diseases, etc.).
A commercial program must necessarily include a program of sponsorship, free of charge, price reduction, charity, honesty, ethical orientation. The favorable image of the medical organization, its sincere charity create psychological trust and, ultimately, a medical and economic effect.
Gradual changes in the consciousness of the population lead to a change in the structure of demand for medical services and medical goods: the demand for information resources, self-medication, preventive procedures and medical services is growing. At the same time, the consumer is sufficiently informed, which leads to an increase in his requirements for the quality and safety of medical services. This not only increases the competition in the market of medical and pharmaceutical services, but also changes the conditions for the operation of enterprises that previously operated in the conditions of the seller’s market. As a result of the emergence of the buyer’s market, health care institutions are forced to resort to marketing research, public relations, and promotion of their services. Changing consumer psychology also influences health care reform. In particular, in Europe and America, government reforms are aimed at reducing government participation in the health care system. At the same time, the share of responsibility, both moral and material, for the state of health is shifted to the person himself. Thus, healthcare institutions, by applying marketing, form their competitive position based on the reputation of the company, which requires the competitiveness of all services. This creates a situation where the main problem of a medical institution is the optimization of the volume and structure of consumption of medical services both in the interests of each individual and in the interests of society as a whole.
Since health care has as its goal the satisfaction of social and personal needs, for its successful activity the needs of society and people should be studied, their possible changes predicted. Marketing helps to reach the set goals, providing healthcare institutions with necessary methods of collecting and analyzing information.
In my opinion, marketing in healthcare has many ethical issues. I was brought up by the people of the Soviet Union, where medicine, education was free and accessible. And I support it, but we live in another time, where the market occupies more and more spheres, and without it we can not imagine life. If we approach this adequately and from different sides, then this problem can be settled.
References:
- Conceptual model of marketing of medical services in simulation modeling of the health care system // Proc. reports of the III International Conference “Radioelectronics in Medical Diagnostics” September 29 – October 1, 1999 – M., 1999. – P. 123-125.
- Model of the marketing system of medical services (marketing formalized essence of the liberal health system) // “Exclusive marketing”, 1999. – N 5 – P. 47-83 (adj. To the “Practical marketing”).
- Polyakov I.V. with co-authors. Marketing of medical services in terms of health insurance // Methodological guide. – S.Pb.-Saratov: “The Word”, 1996. – p. 49.
- Togunov I.A. The ratio and the adequacy of the concepts of the marketing system model and the categories of the health care system operating in the market conditions // Health Care Economics, 1998. – N 7.11. Togunov I.A. Model of the marketing system as a paradigm of situational modeling in healthcare // Sb. Physics and radio electronics in medicine and biotechnology: materials III, intern. scientific and technical conference FRAMB’98. – Vladimir, 1998.
Togunov I.A. Situational modeling as a promising method for predicting the quality of medical care // Bull. SRI EHE and ultrasound them. N.A. Semashko, 1998. – Vol. 3 - Sharabchiev Yu.T., Ulashchik V.S. Health of Belarus. – 1995. – N 4. – p. 20-23.
