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Healthcare Organization Products

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HEALTHCARE ORGANIZATION PRODUCTS 2

Healthcare Organization Products

Defining products is a crucial part of the marketing process in healthcare organizations.

Through product definition, healthcare organizations identify unfulfilled needs and determine the

target markets they can best serve. Thus, organizations aim at delivering satisfaction to

customers and offering benefits to stakeholders in the process of product marketing. Improving

product marketing in healthcare organizations helps to enhance customer service, product

innovation, and product quality (Chen et al., 2018). While many organizations are more

concerned about the clear definition of their products, healthcare organizations in the past paid

minimal attention to the same. This paper discusses some of the major reasons that made

healthcare organizations unconcerned about outlining key attributes in marketing their products.

The first reason why healthcare organizations did not define their products was due to the

aspect of a not-for-profit business. Traditionally, the not-for-profit and voluntary institutions

dominated the healthcare sector. Healthcare organizations served exclusively as charitable

institutions for the sick and destitute who had no alternative places to seek treatment (Chen et al.,

2018). Primarily, these organizations sought to improve their communities through charitable

missions. The mission of healthcare organizations in the past differs from that of today’s for-

profit healthcare institutions, which seek to generate and distribute profits to corporate owners.

Therefore, the institutional behaviors in the past healthcare organizations were not guided

towards obtaining profits. As a result, there was no need for healthcare organizations to define

their products since they offered charitable health care services to the general public.

Second, healthcare organizations in the past considered the ethical implications of

providing for-profit health care services. Precisely, for-profit medical institutions exacerbate the

problems of access to high-quality health care. This implies that if the healthcare organizations in
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the past concentrated so much on product definition, they would be enticed in generating higher

revenues instead of providing adequate health care services. Thus, the organizations were

unconcerned about defining products to reduce the adverse effects contributed by not delivering

care to nonpaying patients.

Further, commercialization of health care was not to a greater extent that it would result

in stiff competition among healthcare organizations. The failure to commercialize the healthcare

sector made it possible for nonprofit organizations to maintain their long-standing practices of

cross-subsidization (Chen et al., 2018). In the past, healthcare organizations practiced cross-

subsidization by inflating the prices charged for paying patients to subsidize the services

provided for the poor. This concept of enabled healthcare organizations to contribute to a fair

share of quality services offered to both the profitable and nonprofitable patients in society.

Therefore, the organizations were unconcerned about product definitions to avoid the

commercialization of health care services.

Additionally, the past healthcare organizations did not treat health care as a commodity

(Besley & Malcomson, 2018). These organizations viewed health care as a right of every

individual in society. Thus, healthcare organizations would not define their products in order to

have a balance between clinical and corporate governance. By not defining their products for

marketing purposes, healthcare organizations would work to attain their business goals, manage

resources well, and improve the quality of services. Also, health care needs tend to be highly

unpredictable for individuals; thus, it would be impossible to meet a justified market distribution

of health. To meet a just distribution of health care in the market, did not primarily base on the

patients' ability to pay. As a result, healthcare organizations avoided defining their products to

enable them to achieve a balance between clinical and corporate goals.

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References

Besley, T., & Malcomson, J. M. (2018). Competition in public service provision: The role of not-

for-profit providers. Journal of Public Economics, 162(1), 158-172.

Chen, J., Harrison, G., & Jiao, L. (2018). Who and what really count? An examination of

stakeholder salience in not‐for‐profit service delivery organizations. Australian Journal

of Public Administration, 77(4), 813-828.