1. Examine how Recovery Clinics and Hospitals can position itself. 2. Examine why it would be necessary for doctors as well as nursing staff to be marketing-oriented.
Pulin Kayastha was simply amazed. He had seen all forms of hostility
and marketing warfare in the consumer goods industry, but to see
similar warfare in the health industry fascinated him. Clearly, he told
himself, doctors had found consumers in their patients. At least, that’s
what the concept note sent by Dr. Ajit Varman, country manager of
Recovery Clinics and Hospitals, seemed to indicate. Varman and
seven other senior doctors had left Karuna Nursing Home and
Hospital to set up Recovery, which, as the note said, “would be
entirely devoted and dedicated to customer responsiveness”.
Pulin was a management consultant and was recommended to
Recovery by the marketing director of Regrow Pharma, a large
pharmaceuticals company in Mumbai. In fact, the suggestion to set up
Recovery came from a non-resident patient, Dinesh Shah, who was
undergoing treatment at Karuna’s large specialty hospital in Central
India. It was in the course of his interaction with the doctors that Shah
sensed their unhappiness with the system. This prompted him to
suggest the idea of Recovery. Varman had joined Karuna 10 years
ago, assured of a challenging career in a hospital that was promising
to be different. But over time, disillusionment set in as Karuna’s
image and response to the environment diluted its equity.
“Now that we have decided to do this, we do not want to repeat old
mistakes, Varman had told Pulin during their first meeting. “Having
worked at Karuna, we can see its weaknesses and why it’s losing
saliency. Ten years ago, when it was established, we believed it was
going to add value to our careers, We became a part of it because we
were told that we were specialists who would bring exclusivity to the
hospital. But soon, the focus shifted to fetching business and
revenues. The management started hiring specialists and private
practitioners, offering them cabins and consultancy arrangements at
Karuna. The strategy was that these doctors would bring in their
patients and use the infrastructure so that the hospital would start
earning money.”
The Karuna management wanted to derive short- term benefits, than
gradually build up clientele. But the strategy, it appeared, did not pay
off. As Varman said: “Because there were many doctors and the
business was not large enough in the first few months. Consequently,
competition for business became cut-throat between doctors.” Despite
modern amenities, state-of-the-art systems and numerous doctors, the
image of the hospital was that of being too commercial – a fallout of
the stigma of being a private hospital. It was common among doctors
to slot every hospital under either category – a place where you get
neglected to death or a place where you get researched to death.
Karuna earned a new label - a place where you got cross-referred to
death, for doctors at Karuna slowly took to enhancing each other’s
earnings as they sent patients back and forth to doctors and
specialists. At the end of his diagnoses, the patient ended up paying a
huge amount of money for this treatment. According to Varman, the
high-cost, high-expectation syndrome hit the hospital. The initial
promise of exclusivity and quality was lost. Karuna had the best
doctors. But after-care was abysmal. With a view to keeping costs
low, nurses, housekeeping staff and even the front office staff were
hired cheap, training was virtually absent, and no attention was paid
to end-user needs. Kayastha could see Recovery trying to be all that.
Karuna was not and desiring not to be all that Karuna was. If
Kayastha thought Varman was hiring him for routine systems design
and a patient management manual, he was mistaken. For Varman
said: “We want to get Recovery’s positioning platform right and work
on a sound marketing plan. What we want you to do is to help us build this brand, help ordinary doctors like us understand what brand-
building entails and how it is managed in a service industry.”
Questions:
1. Examine how Recovery Clinics and Hospitals can position
itself.
2. Examine why it would be necessary for doctors as well as
nursing staff to be marketing-oriented.
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