The Importance of Developing a Marketing Plan for Your Hospital

By Sally Trnka, Director of Network Development, Western Healthcare Alliance

This spring I took a two-week vacation in Western Europe that proved to be an incredible experience.  A major contributor to the success of the trip, and my personal level of enjoyment throughout, was the hours of work that went into planning a 15-day European vacation. With a set amount of time and resources, it was critical that I spend time looking at maps, exploring travel routes, reading hotel and restaurant reviews, talking with people who had traveled there before, and determining timing and costs of different sites. All of my different ideas had logistical and financial price tags that needed to be strategically weighed against what I was hoping to achieve. I didn’t want to waste resources (time or money) so I needed a map; I needed a plan. The same is true for your hospital and your marketing efforts—you can’t be cavalier about them so you need a plan!

I’ve heard a host of reasons as to why rural hospitals don’t have the time or the resources to allocate to the development and implementation of a strategic marketing plan (“Resources are being used to fulfill regulatory requirements,” “We have a negative bottom line,” “We don’t have skilled marketing professionals”).  While all of them are legitimate concerns, they are not sufficient rationale to put your marketing efforts on the back-burner. 

Many rural communities are hemorrhaging patients that are flocking to the larger, urban centers to receive specialized care or care they perceive to be of higher quality. A large part of that is simply that patients are unaware of the depth and breadth of services that are available to them in their own community, particularly outpatient services that rural hospitals are going to need to maximize under the new reimbursement model.  The National Rural Health Resource Center  (The Center) has been conducting Community Health Needs Assessments for more than a decade across the country and we continually hear that patients are woefully under-informed about the care they care receive in their community—frequently at lower costs and higher quality.

Spending the time, energy, and financial resources can help you to educate people in your service area about the scope of care they can receive at your facility. A Strategic Marketing Plan will help you to set more effective priorities, better allocate resources, assess efforts and accountability, identify areas for improvement, and articulate the value you provide to your customers.  A Strategic Marketing Plan also allows for information and knowledge to become institutional and aligns all of your efforts across departments.

The Center offers comprehensive Community Health Needs Assessment and Marketing Planning services that can help support your hospital, or rural health network, assess community needs and perception, and develop a comprehensive marketing plan to support outreach efforts to your community. See the website or contact The Center's Community Specialist, Kami Norland, for more information. Remember, in order to maximize resources and experience, you need to plan!