‘ . . . if a person is going to spend approximately half a million dollars in their lifetime on healthcare, you want that patient for life.’

 Richard K. Thomas, PhD, author, adjunct professor UTCHS

Richard K. Thomas has seen paradigm shifts in the healthcare system since his initiation as a medical sociologist in 1970. After completing a PhD in medical sociology in 1982 and working in Baptist Memorial Health Care Corporation in health services research, he became a healthcare consultant and has remained one for the last 20 years. His book, Marketing Health Services, third edition, dated 2015, comes out this fall. The first edition was published in 2007.

“Healthcare in upcoming 2015 is radically different than 2007,” he said. “Not only has healthcare changed during this last decade, but so has marketing.”

Thomas is an adjunct professor in the department of preventive medicine at the University of Tennessee Health Science Center and a part-time instructor at University of Mississippi-Southaven Campus. His pathway to healthcare marketing authorship came after he wrote articles for the Journal of the American Marketing Association, then became its healthcare editor. Then he started writing books, most targeted at marketing administrators or certain target audiences.

Marketing Health Services has been the most successful of his more than 20 books, becoming a text for healthcare administration education programs across the country. Approximately 125 universities are reviewing the text for use in their programs. Thomas describes it as drastically different from the 2007 edition – containing only 30 or 40 percent of the original material. The chapters have been thoroughly updated, and a chapter on social media is included as well as multiple case studies.

“Healthcare marketing has matured pretty dramatically in the last 10 years,” he said. “Healthcare marketing as a discipline has only been around 20 or 30 years. Even in the 2000s there were reservations on the part of large healthcare organizations about advertising, as doctors were still hesitant about the ethics.”

Healthcare marketing has not only become acceptable, Thomas said, it has become survival. Marketing is pervasive and affects everyone from the corner office to the front desk.

“It has gone from some last-minute ‘oh, we need someone to do some marketing for us’ — to the boardroom. Marketers are involved in day-to-day decision making and policy,” he said.

Where the prevailing opinion used to be market to the patients, now healthcare organizations are marketing to insurance companies. The discipline has become more relationship-oriented, Thomas said. Before you wanted to fill a hospital bed and

compete for a $5,000 procedure. Now, if a person is going to spend approximately half a million dollars in their lifetime on healthcare, you want that patient for life, he said.

Then, if you are an insurer, you are gambling on which services a patient will use, and mistakes could put you out of business.

“For any number of reasons, healthcare administrators have to know much more about consumers than we did in the past,” Thomas said. “The object of the game is we get reimbursed and regulation and cost are issues. The end result is we keep them out of the hospital as much as possible and managing the care in the most efficient manner. You are being measured on outcomes.”

Another area that used to be purely marketing oriented was research. Now, research directs policy and should be built into the administration of the hospital as an ongoing process, he said. Thomas added that whether it is patient satisfaction surveys, staff satisfaction surveys or reporting data detailing where patients originate, there must be an integrated approach.

“The marketing function needs to have their fingers on the numbers such as length of stay, payor mix and the like. We have all gotten better at that aspect of it,” he said. “What we haven’t gotten better at is marrying that data with the external market data. Outside the walls, the population is moving around and becoming redistributed.”

Thomas says future new patients are going to look a lot different. They will have different needs. He cites baby boomers who have different ideas than previous generations about healthcare and are used to having their way. Quality care is paramount to this market segment, as are the benefits of technology at a fair price.

The information explosion produces an environment where a patient with a sickness can discuss it with other people who have the same condition and evaluate what treatments work. He or she also can slam a doctor on a ratings page. A patient can rant about a doctor’s office or a hospital stay on Facebook, as well as research drug side effects on the Internet.

“It is now a dangerous thing – not being aware of what is being said about you out there. Healthcare organizations and physicians are becoming more sensitive to that and trying to control messages,” he said.

However, he notes that the electronic age makes marketing easier in terms of getting messages out quickly and cheaply on websites, through social media, email and other avenues.

Thomas’ basic message? The marketing function in healthcare should be pervasive, especially in this climate of change. “Every development I see in healthcare means an increased role for the marketing function.”