MKTG538

040825

Health care has become an increasingly important sector of the economy both in the US and worldwide and the health-care market has become what seems like a bewildering and complex array of interactions between a wide range of entities- government regulators and laws, insurance companies, health care providers (hospitals, specialty and urgent care clinics, physicians, nurses and staff, administrators), technology providers that help manage and disseminate health-care information and operations, drug and medical device manufacturers, and of course consumers and patients. We regularly, and often simultaneously, read reports of stunning successes and glaring deficiencies in the sector. And sometimes even governments fall because of their inability to pass reforms to their health services in the face of rising costs (e.g., Finland in March 2019)

In this course we will take a \"customer-centric\" view and explore how participants in the health-care sector (physicians & nurses, hospital administrators, executives in the pharmaceutical and medical devices sectors, as well as various intermediaries who service the sector) can improve the effectiveness and efficiency of their offerings (both products and services) to help with the needs of their customers- the consumers of health care, i.e. the patients and their families. We will explore a framework through with this marketing philosophy can be implemented in the health-care sector by the use of tools that help the health care providers learn about customer needs, design appropriate products and services and assess their value to these customers, price them, communicate the benefits, and make them accessible.

This will be accomplished utilizing readings, lectures, cases, and discussions to develop a conceptual grasp of the issues involved. The concepts and skills learned in the class should be equally relevant to participants in each and every sub-sector of the health-care economy. The goal again is to provide a foundation that would enable you to be effective in leading your own workplace to design strategies based on such a customer-oriented (marketing) approach.

GRD - Regular Grades A, B, C, D, E

Graduate

There are no prerequisite requirements for MKTG 538. However, it would be useful to have some basic exposure to broad marketing concepts. Such an exposure could be obtained in MKTG 510 or PHPM 558.