Business of Medicine
Article written by Emil Zhalmukhamedov
Medicine is a very beautiful art and science, however, it is as much art as it is business nowadays. In this article, I will explain a correlation between actual business and medical practice/hospital. Recently, I published research on “The Modern Marketing Methods Of Improving Healthcare Facilities” and in this research, I explained why medical facilities throughout the world should have a marketing plan in place.
There is a very smart non-profit company called The LeapFrog Group – which evaluates hospital transparency and patient safety. In 2016 this company performed a thorough analysis of NYS hospitals, and unfortunately most of the hospitals failed to deliver a satisfying grade, with the exception of private facilities such as NYU.
Let’s now imagine a city hospital that runs on a government budget and sustains its operations on the X amount of patients they see per year. If that X amount of patients didn’t show up in the following year, the jobs will be cut and residency salaries will be lower, or even worse the healthcare facility will close its doors.
While performing research, in my observation - many people who run hospitals fail to understand that a hospital is a business-to-consumer (B2C) organization; therefore a certain approach to implementing managerial executions should be followed. Top points like customer service, responsive marketing plan, allocation of budget, and consumer-driven training - could double or even triple the Return On Investment (ROI) of any healthcare facility.
Going back to 2016 grading; when the grades were published and picked up by mass media it was bad news for hospitals and even worse for people running it.
First of all, when I surveyed patients on which hospitals they prefer to go to and what they think about recent grading – they stated that they refuse to come back for care to the hospital, which received bad grading, and also they pointed out that they rather pay more than go back there. (↓Revenue)
Second, Customer service and marketing of private hospitals keep patients happy. As they are greeted by professional customer service, yes I said customer service because they are still providing service like any other business, and they are trained as such. (↑Brand, ↑Revenue)
Three, the marketing implementations private hospitals have is not expensive, but rather well tailored to its facility. (Budget Maintained/Savings on the long run)
Understanding the main principles of healthcare business management and marketing will bring up future leaders in the modern healthcare community.
To finalize my argument on understanding the business side of medicine, I can say that being a medical student and executive marketing professional with 9 years of experience, I strongly believe that the business of medicine should be taught at least 1 trimester in medical schools, as a lot of freshly minted doctors have no idea how everything works and what are the politics in the business of medicine (Obamacare, Trumpcare etc.), and it raises the generation of not-so-diverse doctors, unable to excel in the patient-centered care - tied around the business.