Question

You are the administrator of a large family practice clinic in a community with a population of 20,000 residents. You have five physicians and two nurse practitioners (NP) in the practice. You also have two nurses, three medical assistants, a medical record clerk and a billing specialist. Your clinic is the largest in the county and the nearest large city with a population 100,000 or more is two hours away. Your clinic is wholly owned by the physicians of the practice with the lead physician, Dr. Thomas, as the majority stake holder. The clinic is also co-located on the same campus as the community hospital that services that region of the state. The bed capacity of the hospital is 90 beds. The physicians and NPs have worked at the clinic for many years. Dr. Thomas has been practicing for 22 years and was the founder of the clinic. The other physicians have been there 10 years or more. The NPs started about three years ago. They have been in their current building ever since Dr. Thomas sold his original single practice and purchased the current building. About two years ago, a large automobile plant was built just outside of your city. At the time that it was built, the population of the city was only 10,000 people. The car plant aggressively hired many workers from the area but also had to recruit workers from outside of the area. In addition to that, many suppliers moved their manufacturing operations to the area so that they could supply the plant with parts. Needless to say, the influx of workers brought with them their families and the population grew significantly. The dynamics of the community changed and the demand for services from the infrastructure increased significantly. The plant has been so successful that there is talk of adding manufacturing to the plant and that they may start building trucks. You quickly recognize that the market is rapidly changing and that the clinic needs to make adjustments to its operations and marketing. You have heard complaints from patients and their families that they are having difficulty scheduling appointments to see a provider as availability is limited. You have also heard complaints of poor customer service and a poor patient experience. Finally, you have also been made aware of the fact that the insurance provided to the workers at the plant is not in network for the physicians/clinic and the out-of-pocket expense to the plant workers is significant. You have also been told that some of the smaller clinics in the county have seen an increase in patient enrollment and that they are very busy. Finally, you were notified by the county medical board that a large healthcare system from the closest major city was considering opening a micro hospital on the other side of town near the automobile plant. You have scheduled a meeting with the providers of the clinic. Your intent is to address these issues. You have attempted to make changes in the past to improve the operations and marketing at the clinic, but you have meet resistance from the physician group…in particular Dr. Thomas. His mindset is, “If it is not broke, don’t fix it”. He also told you, “Why market our clinic? The patients will always come here and marketing would be a waste of money and resources.”

Assignment: Prepare a report for the physicians to discuss your concerns. Your report should:

1. Discuss the marketplace lifecycle vs. the product lifecycle as it relates directly to the clinic and how this impacts the clinic’s ability to provide services in the community.

2. Identify the greatest threat to the clinic and explain how you would propose to eliminate the threat.

3. Describe two marketing actions that you would recommend in order keep the clinic ahead of any competition.

4. Explain whether or not you believe that the clinic can survive the current healthcare environment in the city/county. Back up your response with supporting reasons/documentation.

Complete this assignment in the format of a letter/e-mail to the physician group. Make your positions clear and concise.

Answer 1

Dear Dr. Thomas and physician group,

Subject: Concern about failure to achieve desired business goals.

As a matter of record, with changes in market scenario the need for implementing changes in marketing and operation of our clinic are of prime importance. It is important to understand for every one of us the reasons for bringing in the change. Some of the primary reasons are as follows:

• At the time when clinic started its functions, the population of city was only 10,000 people. That now due to opening of car plant has witnessed the significant growth.
• With many outsiders moving in the city the dynamics of the community has also changed rapidly.
• The demand for service from infrastructure has also witnessed a noteworthy change.
• The marketplace lifestyle has changed ominously and therefore the demand for product.

It is therefore important to understand that at this stage marketplace lifecycle is at the stage of growth. Whereas the product lifecycle i.e. our clinic lifecycle is at the decline stage. The only way to survive and match our product lifecycle with marketplace lifecycle is to bring in the required change.

In order to overcome this challenge, an analysis has been done. As per this analysis some of the prone threats to our clinic survival are as follows:

• Failure to upgrade our operations (difficulty in scheduling appointments and poor customer service),
• Out-of-pocket expense to workers because insurance of workers does not cover network for the physicians/clinic,
• Increase in patient enrolment of other smaller clinics in city.
• Opening of micro hospital on the other side of town near the automobile plant.

After deep analysis, the greatest threat to the clinic was identified as failure to upgrade our operations and marketing. In order to overcome this threat the solution identified is as follows:

• To recruit more physicians and nurses to overcome the difficulty in scheduling appointments.
• To strain the staff in hospitality so that customer service experience of patients can be improved and it will also generate mouth publicity for clinic.
• The marketing of clinic by different means is important in order to fight competition.

Two marketing actions that would help our clinic ahead of competitors are as follows:

• By making use of strategic marketing strategy. In this strategy marketing will be done by highlighting our core competencies that are our unique selling point (USP). For example ours is the largest infrastructure and the physicians are our USP.
• As the clinic is not covered by insurer of car plant workers, we can come up with some insurance card so that treatment at our clinic is affordable.

In order to market these strategies we can utilise social media and advertising by chemist of the area as our marketing tools.

I truly believe that our clinic can survive the current healthcare environment in the city/county if the required changes are made in operations and marketing is done effectively. There are many examples of such clinics in different countries that turned the challenge to success.

Sincerely,

Roopali

Administrator