Dynamic change continues to characterize the health care delivery environment in the fall of 1989. Within such an environment, institutional care providers in particular must develop and implement new and effective strategies, if they are to remain viable entities. One key area where strategic inno-vations are required is marketing.
This research examines the ways in which strategic plan-ning and marketing principles may be employed by acute care general hospitals to enhance bottom-line financial performance, and to assure continued institutional viability. The changing health care delivery environment is examined in the following discussion. This examination is followed by a consideration of the application of strategic planning and marketing principles by acute care general hospitals.
As a result of a combination of factors (increasing costs of health care, changing societal values, advances in treatment therapies, changing demographics, and many others), the deli- very of health care services in the United States continues to undergo rapid and important change (Mentkowski, & Doherty,
1984). Changes in the locus of delivery of health care ser-vices--home health care, community health services, ambulatory care, and so forth, as opposed to hospital delivered services-- create new opportunities for, and new demands on the hospitaladministrator (Weiss, 1983).
For hospital administrators, one of the more significant of the changes occuring in health care delivery involves the definition of the target market for acute care general hospi-tals. Casual consideration may cause one to reject this idea, because, after all, the patient remains the focus of health care delivery. Through the mid-1980s, however, a hospital's target market was defined by the patient and the patient's admitting physician (Keckley, 1988). In such an environment, marketing efforts by acute care general hospitals were directed toward potential patien...