In conjunction with this core aspect of their marketing strategy of concentrating on delivering exceptional experiences, Providence Portland Medical Center has developed an award-winning outreach programs strategy. The Center funds the Providence Community Grants Council which supports 52 different charities throughout the Portland, Oregon area. The Center has been able to successfully define a marketing strategy based on this approach to Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR). As is the case with the continual improvement of internal processes and their support of the marketing process, the Center has also been able to integrate their CSR messaging as part of their broader marketing strategies. The reliance of healthcare providers on socially responsible messaging is highly effective when put into the context of CSR initiatives that genuinely benefit a community (O'Malley, 2005). Clearly the Center has been able to attain this level of performance as their occupancy rates are on average at 75% or greater, and their control over costs has significantly improved over time (Patmas, 2006).

The marketing strategies of the Center are diverse across the three specialty treatment centers of adult and pediatric, coronary care and intensive care yet unified under the CSR-based outreach and community integration efforts. Clearly the planning senior management teams realize the criticality of creating strong links into the broader community, and see these relationships as critical to the Center accomplishing its overarching mission of providing exceptional care to the disadvantaged and lower-income communities of Portland. One of the most accurate measures of how successful a CSR-based program is based on an altruistic mission is its ability to attract exceptional talent that also believes in and wants to contribute to the vision and objectives (O'Malley, 2005). This has certainly been the case with the Center as it has attracted dozens of medical awards and has also been recognized for excellence in many of its treatment areas including pain management (Super, 1996). The marketing strategies based on the ability to deliver exceptional patient experiences on a consistently high level (Papanikolaou, Ntani, 2008) and yet meet diverse needs through flexibility of process and execution (Powers, Jack, 2008) anchored in CSR initiatives (O'Malley,...

Critical to this is the ability to also concentrate on creating the strongest community network possible to further strengthen the mission of the Center.
Analyzing Providence Portland's Performance

Providence Portland Medical Center is one of 25 DRG-based hospitals in Oregon and delivered $24.6M in free patient care in 2008, providing $51.5M in community benefits. The Center's utilization rate is at 75% for 2008 and 74% for 2007, with average length of stay being 4.84 days. In terms of market share, it is a leader in the DRG Hospital segment of Oregon. The Center generates $5.8M in donations to the Providence Portland Medical Foundation and has seen significant cost reductions from 35,548 volunteer hours worked. All of these factors have contributed to the Center's profitability as measured as operating margin of approximately 3% in 2008. To see how the Center compares to State Averages see Figure 1.

Figure 1: Comparison of Operating Margin & Total Margin

Data Source: Hospital Financials, 1997-2007