Finance in Health Care
Fullhealth is one of the largest healthcare organizations in Helena, Montana. Fullhealth owns multiple lines of healthcare businesses including a health plan; three long-term care assisted living facilities, and two home healthcare agencies. There are three types of healthcare enrollee plans with the following number of enrollees: 8500 Medicaid enrollees, 6200 Medicare enrollees, and 15,000 employer-sponsored health plan enrollees. Within the last two to four years, all plans have consistently earned a profit.
The Board of Directors, however, wants to raise the target profit for future years. Local competitors with similar facilities have either earned marginal profits or reported a net loss. If profit losses continue, two of your company’s competitors may be forced to go out of business by the end of the year. You are a staff member in the Finance Department of Fullhealth whose sole responsibility is to advance the success of the organization through assisting in the planning, forecasting, and managing of the organizations finances.
Task Type: Discussion Board Deliverable Length: 3-4 paragraphs There are very few industries that have the unique economic factor in which the majority of its revenue does not come directly from the customer, but from a third party. This unique economic factor is usually referred to as a private healthcare insurance company. Third party payers are the commercial, governmental, and healthcare maintenance insurance companies that help providers in managing its patient’s accounts.
To increase referrals, Fullhealth is beginning to develop a new marketing campaign for the assisted living and home health agencies business. You have been asked by the CFO to converse with the marketing director indicating the importance of having advertising materials for both the health insurance companies and the patients who receive the healthcare services. List three marketing approaches you would use to target potential patients and healthcare insurance companies. Explain what factors you used in choosing your specific marketing strategies and the purpose of each selection.
Some marketing strategies may include the following: • find a way to be unique and different • add value by bundling services • direct marketing • television • telemarketing • market to existing customers and referrals Objective: Discuss the role of third parties in healthcare revenues and expenditures. The market includes the patients and the healthcare insurance companies in Helena, Montana. By itself, the market as a whole could be divided into smaller market units for the sake of operations and development.
The products that need to be marketed include the long-term care assisted living facilities and the home healthcare agencies business. The three marketing approaches that can be utilized in targeting the patients and the healthcare insurance companies include: – 1. Selective segmentation approach – This involves marketing a particular product in appropriate markets, depending upon customer the customer segment (determined after conducting market research). This is performed, as there are equal distribution of opportunities and risks involved.
In case any particular product fails in a particular market unit, then the company would survive because of the presence of other products in the respective markets units. 2. Market segmentation approach – In this kind of an approach, several products are marketed in a single market unit, for the benefit of focusing a niche market and thus differentiating from its competitors. 3. Product segmentation approach – In this kind of an approach, a single product is marketed to the different marketing units that are present in Helena.
The ensures that in case the product fails in a single market unit, the other market units could help the company to survive and yield profits and sales. (Kotler, 2001, & Ramaswamy, 2004) Based on the above mentioned marketing approaches which the marketing director has formulated, the marketing department now focuses on the promotional activities by adopting an integrated promotional mix strategies which includes: – ? Advertising (includes inbound and outbound telemarketing, print media, outdoor media, electronic media, etc)
? Sales force (sales personnel using catalog, brochures, etc, and marketing personally to the respective target audience) ? Direct / Online marketing (online seems to be an appropriate strategy as it suits the service industry ? focuses on e-commerce where the respective units can be reached much faster and at the right and convenient time, as required by the customers). ? Public relations / publicity (Fullhealth can use their own employees as spokespersons for conducting trade fairs, exhibitions, workshops, etc, to promote their services). (Kotler, 2001, & Ramaswamy, 2004)
Since the company depends more on the third party for marketing their services, the CFO has to chiefly look into their expenditure pattern, which is derived mainly from their sales and revenue pattern. This third party agent has to be primarily given consideration in terms of motivation as their highest profit-generators for the company. (Kotler, 2001, & Ramaswamy, 2004) References: Kotler, P. (2001), Marketing Management, Prentice, New Delhi. Ramaswamy, V. S. and Namakumari, S. (2004), Marketing Management: Planning, Implementation and Control, 3rd ed, Macmillan, Delhi.
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