Health care organizations need to stay afloat just as other businesses do, but there is a danger in introducing traditional business concepts of marketing and economics into health care that the caring aspect of the profession could be lost. Therefore, strategies for incorporating business concepts into the health care environment need to be developed with a focus on the quality of care.
Some marketing approaches would actually provide better quality of care rather than worse. Customer-centric marketing, for example, places the customer's needs at the center of the marketing approach, gaining more business by providing for the customer's needs. In a customer-centric marketing approach, the organization maintains a constant awareness of the customer's needs and wants and focuses all of its efforts on satisfying them. This approach would guarantee not only the quality of care that a patient receives but also the spirit in which it is given, as customer-centric organizations are diligent about making the customer comfortable and ensuring convenience and a nurturing environment.
Incorporating traditional business economics into health care without compromising the caring aspect is more difficult. To accomplish this, it is necessary to divorce the caring aspect from finances and make them separate entities in the system. Then, when an indigent patient arrives at the hospital, for example, the individual is accorded excellent treatment just as any other patient would be, and the financial system that seeks payment would be the only entity aware of the patient's ability to pay. That system would rely on a variety of funding sources that could fill the gap left by a patient's limited insurance or limited ability to pay.
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