Organization choice and marketing mix in healthcare settings

Diabetes Clinic

Marketing a Diabetes Clinic

For some people, the entire idea of creating a marketing plan for those struggling with a serious chronic disease might seem distasteful. Making money off of other people's suffering can seem to be capitalism at its untrammeled worst. However, there is no reason that capitalism cannot in fact be married to compassion in the case of providing care for diabetics. Indeed, marketing a clinic that is providing good care is a real service for people with diabetes for several different reasons that will be explained below.

Moreover, given that at least for now medicine is delivered in the United States primarily within a for-profit context, it is essential that medical providers be realistic about the ways in which they run their business. If they fail to be realistic, then they will not be able to stay in business and they will not be able to provide the care that their patients need. This paper explores the marketing strategy pursued by an established diabetes clinic that has been in business for twelve years and that provides services to about 250 patients a month.

One of the most important (and indeed arguably the most important) aspect of running a successful business is having a product to sell that people want to buy. With medical care, the product is health, which (as suggested above) is both easy and rather tricky (from an ethical standpoint) to sell. Medical care (that is, products and/or services that promote good health) is something that nearly everyone wants, and so in this sense it is easy to market since there is no need to create a market. This is, of course, not always the case since for many products there is not a serious need and so the provider of the services or products must create in the mind of the potential buyer a perceived need for the product.

The classic example of creating a sense of need for a product that is entirely unnecessary was the Pet Rock, which for a brief while was popular in no small part precisely because it was so obviously unnecessary. However there are many products and services that are far less trendy and ephemeral that are, nonetheless, almost equally unnecessary by an objective standard such as yet one more color of pale pink nail polish or the services of a personal shopper. Medical care falls at the other end of this spectrum, for it is literally vital, literally a question of life and death.

Thus a clinic that offers medical products and services (as this one does) has overcome what is for many company owners or managers the biggest hurdle: They do not have to convince anyone that what they are offering is worth paying for. Their product is already well established in the minds of potential customers as being valid and valuable. Just as important is the fact that the clients who come to this clinic already define themselves as consumers of services and products for diabetics. These services include diabetes education about foot and wound care and nutrition as well as products that many individuals with diabetes use, including cookbooks, online support from diabetes educators and nurses, testing supplies, support socks and hose to help with the effects of poor circulation, and support groups for different populations of those suffering from diabetes.

This clinic offers comparable pricing on products such as testing supplies. Testing supplies are one of the most serious costs for people with diabetes and so being able to offer a low price on these is very important. The clinic's prices are higher than some online sites, but to compensate for this has the advantage that it provides supplies on the same day. The clinic staff will also email or call individuals to remind them that they are probably running out of their supplies soon and should stop in. The clinic also delivers all of their supplies, which can be especially important because the complications of diabetes include limb amputation and blindness, which limit an individual's mobility.

The clinic also offers counseling services, and this is key to its success. While the other services and products that it offers are valuable, they are also offered by many other organizations, from pharmacies to other clinics, to large medical centers, to online merchants. What most other institutions lack, however, is the willingness or ability to offer the kind of psychological and emotional support that is essential to help an individual handle such a serious disease with the kind of grace needed to make life feel as if it were worth living (Counseling People with Diabetes, 2003).

The director of the clinic, when asked why she decided to offer low-cost counseling along with medical services, said that she came to the decision because of her own experiences as an individual with Type 1 diabetes. There are two distinctly different forms of diabetes: Type 1 and Type 2. About 95% of individuals with diabetes have Type 2, which has the effect that those with Type 1 tend to be underserved by a medical community focused on the majority of those with diabetes.

The director said that she had been able to receive accurate medical information in most cases, and being able to do so was one of the reasons that she opened the clinic. She also understood the need for patients to be able to get reasonably priced supplies consistently, so this too was one of her goals. But she wanted to go beyond what other clinics, pharmacies, etc. could offer by providing low-cost counseling. There are few opportunities for people to come together in a supportive atmosphere to discuss the emotional and psychological challenges associated with this disease (Nelson, et al. 2008). Those who can afford individual counseling can receive support that way, but many individuals with diabetes cannot afford to pay for such counseling (in no small part because they are paying so much in terms of the other medical expenses that their disease requires of them). Moreover, for many individuals there is additional benefit in being able to receive group rather than individual counseling.