Marketing: a useful tool for radiology departments and free-standing imaging centers

摘要

Healthcare's once-upon-a-time days are gone. Simply being the nearby hospital does not automatically stake your hospital's financial claim. So, in an increasingly competitive industry, what is the ideal way to market a hospital and especially a radiology service to consumers, who are often no longer just patients? Insulation from market mechanisms has resulted in highly inefficient healthcare-service structures. Steadily increasing healthcare costs have now resulted in a growing trend towards the introduction of market mechanisms based on supply and demand. Marketing is fundamental to business growth and is probably the most important success factor that is in your control and it is one of the strongest factors to differentiate you from your competitors. One misconception is that marketing equals advertising or selling, and this leads directly to the most common mistake that many physician group practices make: advertising without developing a strategic marketing plan first.