Know-How Exchange : Advertising/PR

hi riddings

Echoing jason, randall and sharon, what part of the Healthcare System (providers) you are referrign to? if you are wondering whether Hospitals should advertise, then let me share an answer i posted in this forum on Hospital Advertisement earlier.


The marketing/Advetsing of Hospitals to customers depends on the country you are referring. Let me give you some background regarding hospitals of the part of the world where i live in.

fo countries like India, Bangladesh, Pakistan, most of the people are poor and cant afford medical costs like surgery. here the medical insurance system, as seen in west, is non-existant. the only option these majority of the population have is the state-run hospitals which are in dilapidated conditions, the service is extremly poor with broken down machines, absence of quality and supply of low quality medicine and total complaints about the entire system can surpass the volume of an encyclopaedia.

In Bangladesh, untill recently, most of the patients who needed coronary surgery (bypass, angiogram, angioplasty, CMC etc.) had no option of having that facility in Bangladesh and had to go abroad (mainly India, Thailand, SIngapore) and that would cost a fortune, resulting in deaths of hundreds just due to lack of treatment.

Recently in Bangladesh some state-run hospitals as well as privately run hospitals in specialized diseases like coronary/cardiac diseases have been established. The state run hospitals dont advertise at all as it is state funded and patients do come to this hospital for treatment as it is cheaper.

the privately run hospitals are more aggresive in marketing their hospitals to the general patients, as there is always an inherent doubt about the quality of treatment in state-run hospitals.

privately run Cardiac hospitals in Bangladesh market themselves mostly in 2 ways
1. the promote themselves amongst the medical/physician community.
2. promoting the success of the hospitals to the general customers/patients directly through advertisements in Newspapers.

in the ads they publish the testimonial of the successfully operated/treated patients, pictures of the patients, cost comparison of the local hospital against having the same treatment in Thailand, Singapor, India(reputed, most frequented hospitals) etc.

in both these ways they promote the notable and famous physicians and surgeons both local and foreign who are part of the hospital. Usually these physicians and surgeons are already well reputed among the physician community. So when a patient of cardiac disease visits a General Practitioner (GP), that GP refers the patient to the Cardiac Hospital where this famous surgeon or the entire team works.

hope this helps. the following is the link to the earlier question in this regard.

https://www.marketingprofs.com/ea/qst_question.asp?qstID=3183#22039

cheers!!