Healthcare Marketing: Are You Getting The Point?
Philanthropy has been at the core of the healthcare philosophy worldwide; at least it has been projected that way. However philosophical goals and economic goals are two opposite ends for the private healthcare system. There is a tug o’war going on for affordability of healthcare. Philosophy traditionally tries to pull the rope down toward a charity zone and economy has been trying to pull it toward capitalistic gains. This creates lot of confusion and tension amongst the receiver and provider, that is, consumers and healthcare institutions. Consumers presume healthcare delivery is an act of philanthropy and expect that it must cost very less or nothing whereas profit-seeking healthcare delivery institutions expect that care should be fairly compensated at their own set standards. Both parties start pulling the affordability rope in their favorable direction to make things worsen further. Establishing a balance in this affordability war seems to be a distant future or probably an unattainable goal at least till the time healthcare becomes completely a state subject or totally out of the purview of the same. It is a complicated task when neither side is completely right or completely wrong.
More than ever before the Indian healthcare system is experiencing pressure from several different forces namely social, political, financial, legal, and technological. Money being the central idea or currency to offset these forces, healthcare institutions are gasping for funds to survive. Investors either keep themselves away due to low ROI and increasingly regulated healthcare environment or they make hostile propositions to the hospital owners. Fortis Hospitals deal is a recent example where every bidder was using Fortis infrastructure to gain benefits for their primary businesses. Due to lack to government empathy and socio political disturbances running healthcare business profitability is becoming impossible for law abiding, self-developed midsize healthcare institutions. In the age of social media, where things going viral, so does your opinion and it spread exponentially. The hospital scenario is complex as greater emotions are involved in service delivery than in any other sector. The state of mind of one person becomes the mindset of many because of sensitivity of services and influence of media. Every aspect of healthcare service delivery is seen with prejudice and suspicion. I am not trying to take sides here; I firmly believe that our healthcare system and institutions are equally responsible for the current unpleasant situation.
Widening gap. There is a huge gap between needs and wants of healthcare consumers now. Human needs are usually limited and can be attended with definitive cost whereas wants or desires are unattainable due to their inherent nature of inexhaustibility. I think it is high time for both the consumer and providers to introspect and differentiate between needs and wants. Consumers should limit their desires and set right expectations from providers and providers should concentrate on delivery of core services rather than frilling it unnecessarily. I believe this will reduce the cost of healthcare services substantially.
One size fits all. In today’s world of customization, healthcare is still hung on a traditional one size fits all approach and provides the same old fashioned services with a medieval mindset that the patient is always in need and not the provider. Ideally it should be the other way around. Customization leads to understanding uncovered needs of consumers giving rise to new business opportunities and creates blue oceans. Services like Portea providing homecare services and finance companies providing zero percent interest loans to patients are recent examples of such thinking.
Focus. In search of maximizing profitability and margins everyone is trying to move toward the top of the economic pyramid; it is a good thing but we need to remember that the more you move upwards on pyramid the lesser is the space and scalability, expectations of consumers increase exponentially and you tend to lose flexibility. Your margins may increase but at the expense of scalability; you will have to work in an already crowded and ever contracting space. Concentrating on the lower section of the pyramid which contains a whopping 60–70 percent of the Indian population provides a huge opportunity to attain economy of scale. Focus should be on the section where quality, affordability, and scalability can be achieved complimented by sustainable growth.
Pricing. When the government starts involving itself in the pricing of products or services it is considered as the culmination of red tapism and is severely detrimental for developing economies like India. Private players may start losing interest and a particular sector may suffer heavily in the long run. In the Indian healthcare scenario there is one significant difference though, that it has been very poorly regulated since the beginning and this lead to an uneven growth of the healthcare sector favoring more toward organized corporate hospital institutions. Corporate hospitals became the only authentic healthcare institution in India to get advanced and quality treatment. Leading to sort of monopoly of pricing. Recent corrections in cost of treatment packages proposed by government insurance schemes which are accepted by almost all the corporate hospitals provide confirmation for such monopolistic pricing by corporate hospitals till now. There has been no structured formula or authentic base for how much one should charge for particular service till now. Everyone follows competition-based pricing.
Discounting: Indian healthcare marketers are obsessed with marketing methods similar to consumer durables. They try to encash only on discount frenzy mindset of Indians. How difficult is it to understand that what works for apparels or FMCGs may not or must not work for healthcare services. Due to fierce competition in urban India to grab market share, hospitals are increasingly resorting to discounting their services heavily. This leads to nothing but price war and deterioration in standard of services in long run. This I feel is the biggest mistake hospitals are committing collectively. New players entering the market must analyze this scenario and should enter with definitive strategy to differentiate and positioning in market.
The point is:
Differentiation. Long lasting differentiation for any organization comes from the value system, vision, and goals of an organization. Most of the healthcare organization specially the mid-sized hospitals or nursing homes run by successive generations of doctors in a family fail to ask the question why? The answer to the question why to start a hospital or why should I work in this sector? will give you enough of data to differentiate you or your hospital from others. Subsequent Wh questions like what, when, where, who, and how will provide you other crucial answers on how should you plan to run your hospital and set a roadmap toward building a successful healthcare institution.
Keep it to the core. Once you know how good you are at something and what is that something you are good at, the rest will follow. The key is sticking to what you are good at and making everyone else know about it. Marketing what you are good at is much easier, convincing, and effective because it comes from within you. Diversification from your core competencies will lead to uncertainty, giving rise to anxiety and stress. And historically people tend to go wrong under stress. Well, exceptions are always there!
Build to last. What goes up must come down. Interestingly over the last couple of centuries few exceptional companies like GE, IBM, HP, Ford, and TATA Motors have proved this notion otherwise. They have shown unprecedented resilience toward being relevant throughout. Their financial graphs may have shown ups and downs but their core values and adaptability to new age scenarios have guided them over the decades toward a successful journey. This kind of resilience only comes from the ability to look at the very distant future with complete impartiality and conviction.
Plan. Failing to plan is planning to fail, fits perfectly for the healthcare scenario in India. Majority of hospitals in India are a family business with limited financial strength. In a typical scenario, to start a mid-sized multispecialty unit providing multi-faculty services under one roof, a group of doctors come together. In majority of such hospitals full attention is given to building world-class infrastructure by exhausting most of the available corpus. Completely ignoring the fact that this world class infrastructure will require almost equal amount of money to run and market it once started. Here things start getting complicated and most hospitals end up going bankrupt or get sold in hostile deals.
Get help. One of the misconceptions of hospital owners is that hospitals run because of doctors. If doctors are good the hospital will be successful come what may. Even though having good doctors is a crucial element in a hospital’s success but it is no more a decisive factor. Especially in the urban scenario the consumer has got many options available. Other operational factors like availability, waiting time, and ease of getting appointment play an equally important role. The rapidly increasing influence of digital media, where stars against your google listing are valued more than the number of degrees in front of your name, helps in deciding whether you should be consulted or not. In such a situation, it becomes very important to manage your digital perception by going out and telling the digital world members that why and how good you are. The good news is that it can be achieved with the help of experts in the field. The only thing required is changing the point of view and look out for help!
