Health Services Marketing: A Practitioner's Guide

Despite the growing importance of marketing for health professionals, there is no concise how-to guide available on the topic for use by physician practices, hospitals and other healthcare organizations. Although the industry has become increasingly market driven, healthcare administrators and marketers are left with little guidance with regard to the concepts, techniques, and data appropriate for healthcare marketing.

The proposed book would serve as a convenient reference for health professionals who want to understand the marketing process, develop marketing initiatives or interface with marketing professionals. Marketing theory and the history of marketing in healthcare will be minimized in an attempt to provide a practical guide for everyday use. The focus will be on how to do marketing, with the reader introduced to supporting aspects such as market research, marketing planning, and evaluation. The author also discusses marketing techniques for social marketing.

Health Services Marketing: A Practitioner’s Guide will cover broad topics appropriate for any healthcare organization and provide enough specifics to tailor marketing activities to the needs of particular practitioners. This book will be useful for both for-profit and not-for-profit organizations.

Doody Review Services

Reviewer:Lawrence M. Leber, MA(Emerson College)
Description:This easy to comprehend book describes the tactics and strategy required to effectively market products and services in the healthcare industry.
Purpose:The purpose is to provide a crash course in marketing communications for those in the health services industry.
Audience:It could be argued that the book is written for students, residents, and practitioners who all would benefit from the simple discussion of marketing practices. However, for marketing communications professionals, the history and complexities of the health industry provided in the book are very useful as a foundation.
Features:The book offers a Marketing 101 course for health industry professionals in the healthcare market.
Assessment:Since marketing in the health services industry has been generally frowned on for the "unethical" cognitive attachments associated with marketing healthcare, the author definitely has filled the gap in most business plans in the health industry. The author meets his objective of providing tools for health professionals who have struggled to achieve proper positioning in a growing competitive marketplace.

Richard K. Thomas is Vice President of the Health Management Associates, Memphis, TN. He is also Associate Professor at the University of Tennessee Health Science Center. Thomas has authored a recent academic treatment of marketing and healthcare: Marketing Health Services (2004, Health Administration Press). He is also author of Health Communication and several other books on health administration published by Springer.