1. Health Care: Don’t Make Them
Sick While They’re Trying To
Get Well
Tridip Jyoti Borah

2. Changes ?
Seller’s
Market
Buyer’s
Market

3. Health Care in the USA
… Then
• There would always be
sickness and disease and
calamity.
• And the sick and injured
would always need
hospitals and doctors and
nurses.
• And they would always
be good little patients and
do exactly as they are
told.

4. Now …
• Hospitals and clinics and • Holding people-skill
doctors are relearning training programs on the
• Hospital Administrators: personnel front
Three Piece suit, talk • Finding ways to serve
bottom line and return on patients and make more
investment. To stay money alongwith.
ahead of the competition
• Hospital Administrators
talk about marketing
strategy and
segmentation

5. Patients as Customers
• The difference between quality of
care and quality of caring they
receive
• Consumers are willing to pay
more for better service
• “Being treated as an individual”
is expected more of than “getting
better” (Foot Hills Hospital,
Calgary)
• “Patients want to be more
actively involved in the decision-
making process concerning their
care and treatment” (Accepted
as a growth trend)

6. What do Patients Judge?
• “Patients have no way to judge
on the technical or care-oriented
aspects of healthcare but they
base their decisions on things
they do feel qualified to judge”
Eg: The room, the food, the
admission process, the answers
they get to their questions,
parking space availability –
everything!

7. Questions ?
• What’s new and What’s next?
“Achievement of service quality standards”
• What is the new health care consumer looking for?
“Patients have opinions about the care they expect to
achieve but not to play doctor or second guess medical
practises”

8. Why Change is
Difficult?
• Too many hospitals and Insurance Plans are competing for too
few patients.
• USA spends 11% of their GNP on health care (The largest in
the world) but the cost of medical services has escalated 7
times faster in the last 5 years.
• The consumer is disappointed in the return on his/her health
care dollar.
• Internal problems are rising among the health care providers
• John Naisbitt: 2000 hospitals will have either closed their doors
or absorbed into other hospital systems

9. Responding to the New
Consumer
• “Hospitals as Hotels”
• Amenities provided howsoever do not decide the fate of the
hospital’s success.
• Bottom Line: “The way the patient is treated as a person”
• “Guest Relations” Training: Improving Customer Service
• Patients are to be treated as people and not as a case files and
symptoms
Eg: The Hemorrhoid in 407
• Customer Satisfaction + Customer Complaint Issue = Customer
Retention

10. Dramatic changes underway in
the way medical services are
paid for in the USA
1983: Diagnostic HMO’s: Catering
Hospitals setting
Related to 25 Million
their own price.
Grouping Americans

11. • Operates as a sort of Health Care buying club
and out-patient clinic run as for-profit business.
• The employees save 30 – 40 % on Health Care
benefits.
• They :
 Take 2nd opinion on surgical procedures
 Limit hospital stays
 Prenegotiate the fees of the Doctors and
hospitals they send to
They basically look after the cost side of
healthcare

12. Gold in the litter?
Riverside
Methodist
Hospital
Focus on
Care and Caring, both the
dollars and the “sense” of
modern medicine
Beth Israel
Hospital

13. The American Health
Care System Shouldn’t
Be Made Sick While
They’re Trying To Get
Well Indeed.