Marketing and Healthcare Organizations

The need for a more conscious, focused and proactive approach to the management of health-care organizations has increased substantially. One consequence of this is that health-care managers are having to look at managerial approaches and techniques that previously were the province of the private sector. Prominent among those is the whole area of marketing. This work takes a broad approach to the marketing process, highlighting some of the challenges that health-care managers and medical professionals are having to face. Having done this, the authors move on to examine some of the characteristics of good and bad management practice. It is against this background that, in subsequent chapters, they turn their attention to the question of marketing and how it might best contribute to the management of organizations throughout the health sector. Each chapter includes questions and checklists offering scope for applying marketing principles to primary and secondary health-care organizations of all types, sizes and specialities.

Colin Gilligan is Professor of Marketing at Sheffield Business School. He is the author of books on advertising, business decision making, international marketing, marketing for the professions and strategic marketing management and, most recently, strategic planning. Over the past ten years, he has acted as a consultant to a wide variety of organizations, including numerous professional practices. Robin Lowe is Senior Lecturer in Marketing and Head of the Small Business Research Unit at Sheffield Business School. He has 25 years experience in management and consultancy in both large and small organizations. He is the author of books on international marketing and, with Colin Gilligan, marketing for the professions.

1. The challenges facing health care organizations 2. So what is marketing?: (And how can it be applied to the health care sector?) 3. Developing a customer-centred health care organization: The first few steps 4. Customer satisfaction and the role of marketing information systems and market research 5. Environmental pressures and the parable of the boiled frog 6. Planning for success (part one): Assessing your planning skills 7. Planning for success (part two): Developing the marketing plan 8. Using the marketing audit to assess the true level of the organization's capability: revisiting your strengths and weaknesses 9. Developing the health care marketing mix 10. Setting the standards of customer care: The Blackpool rock phenomenon 11. Internal marketing, leadership and teamworking: Fighting the Napoleonic complex 12. Implementing the plan and making things happen 13. Thornham General Hospital