In-Company Clinics
In-company clinics, such as the ones established by Toyota and other companies, represent one possible way of lessening the stress on the healthcare system, but their success relies on a number of environmental factors. The most obvious of these is the relative distance to the in-company clinic as compared to the nearest public hospital. Convenient access to healthcare services can prompt employees to address their medical problems sooner and more efficiently (O’Keefe & Anderson, 2017).
Another environmental factor is operational costs in the in-company clinic. If these are lower than in a community clinic, the overall visit cost for a patient can be lower as well, thus making it a preferable alternative (O’Keefe & Anderson, 2017). Finally, the quality of medical services, both real and perceived, in the in-company clinic as compared to a community clinic is a third environmental factor. Statistically, most employees lack the medical knowledge necessary to make meaningful conclusions about the quality of care in a given institution. Given that, the employees will likely make decisions on using in-company clinics based on the overall degree of trust toward the employer.
From a marketing perspective, successfully advertising an in-company clinic should rely on stressing its core advantages. Statistically speaking, hospital marketing most often stresses accommodations, reputation, and convenience (Schwartz & Woloshin, 2019). Stressing convenience would be the best option for an in-company clinic due to the lower distance and costs they generally offer as compared to community clinics (O’Keefe & Anderson, 2017). Since in-company clinics will generally have to compete with the long-established community clinics, appeals to reputation are unlikely to have considerable effect unless the employees put exceptional trust in their employer.
After-Hours Clinics and Urgent Care Facilities
The success of urgent care facilities and after-hours clinics in metropolitan areas depends on several environmental factors that influence their appeal as an alternative to other healthcare options. The availability in terms of time is the most obvious factor among these. Allowing the patients to receive continuity of care for chronic ailments and episodic care for acute conditions on a wider schedule, after-hours clinics, and urgent care facilities proved a well-appreciated improvement (Mosalpuria et al., 2021).
Similarly, the relative distance to the facility providing after-hours or urgent care and the transport infrastructure is also crucial environmental factors in this regard. They most likely account for the fact that metropolitan areas have better access to urgent care facilities and after-hours clinics than rural areas (Mosalpuria et al., 2021). Apart from that, population density is also a fairly obvious environmental factor that causes higher demand for urgent care and after-hours medical services for metropolitan areas specifically.
As with the in-company clinics discussed above, the key advantage of urgent care facilities and after-hours clinics in terms of marketing should be availability. To begin with, immediate access to medical care is the defining feature and the reason for their existence for them. Apart from that, availability is generally one of the aspects emphasized most often in healthcare marketing, which suggests the effectiveness of this strategy (Schwartz & Woloshin, 2019). With this in mind, the most reasonable suggestion for marketing an after-hour clinic or an urgent care facility is a strong emphasis on availability without compromising the quality of services and accommodations. This strategy would stress the defining feature of the services offered and highlight their foremost positive difference among the possible alternatives.
References
Mosalpuria, K., Wilson, F. A., & Siahpush, M. (2021). Disparities in access to after-hours care in the U.S.: A national study. Journal of Health Disparities Research and Practice, 14(1), Article 1. Web.
O’Keefe, L. C., & Anderson, F. (2017). Benefits of on-site clinics. Online Journal of Issues in Nursing, 22(2), 1-10. Web.
Schwartz, L. M., & Woloshin, S. (2019). Medical marketing in the United States, 1997-2016. Journal of the American Medical Association, 321(1), 80-96. Web.