HCS 472 Week 1 The Evolution of Health Care Marketing Example

From Hospital Brochures to Star Ratings: How Health Care Marketing Evolved, and What It Means for a New Midwife-Led Birth Center Choosing How to Be Found

[Student Name]

University of Phoenix

HCS/472: Marketing in the Health Care Industry

Week 1 Assignment

[Instructor Name]

[Date]

The birth center, its founders and its plans are composites written for a model paper; history and research findings come from the sources listed.

Three certified nurse-midwives are preparing to open a composite nonprofit freestanding birth center in a suburban county, nine minutes from a hospital with a labor and delivery unit. At their first planning meeting, one founder asked whether a birth center should advertise at all; in her training, good care spoke for itself and referrals came from physicians. Another pointed out that families now choose where to give birth on their phones. Their disagreement repeats a debate health care has had for a century. This paper traces the evolution of health care marketing and applies it to the center's first decisions.

Period One: Professional Reticence

For most of the twentieth century, physicians and hospitals treated advertising as unprofessional. Medical ethics codes discouraged self-promotion, hospitals depended on physicians to admit patients and marketing, where it existed, meant public relations: annual reports, fundraising and newspaper stories about new equipment. Patients rarely chose a hospital themselves; their physician chose for them.

Period Two: Marketing Broadened

In 1969, Kotler and Levy (1969) argued that marketing is not limited to selling products and that nonprofit organizations such as hospitals, schools and churches serve customers and must understand their needs, design services around them and communicate with them. Their argument gave health care leaders a way to see marketing as research and service design, not only persuasion.

Period Three: Competition

From the late 1970s through the 1990s, several forces pushed hospitals toward formal marketing. Restrictions on professional advertising eased after legal challenges, Medicare moved hospitals to fixed payments per admission, managed care plans began steering patients to contracted providers and hospitals competed for insured patients and physicians. Hospitals created marketing departments, conducted market research and advertised service lines such as heart and maternity care. Maternity became a battleground because a family that gives birth at a hospital often returns for pediatric and other care.

Period Four: The Consumer and Digital Era

Since the 2000s, patients have taken a larger role. High-deductible plans made them more sensitive to price, federal price transparency rules have made prices easier to find and the internet put information and opinions in every pocket. Hanauer et al. (2014), in a national survey, found that about six in ten respondents considered physician rating sites at least somewhat important when choosing a physician, and a quarter had used them. A family choosing a birth center today will likely read reviews before they ever speak to a midwife.

Mistakes From the Competitive Era

The competitive period also left cautionary examples. Hospitals spent heavily on billboards and television promising the best care in the region, often without data to support the claim, and many campaigns raised costs without changing where patients went, because physicians still controlled admissions. Maternity advertising in particular emphasized luxury, such as private suites and celebratory dinners, rather than outcomes such as cesarean rates or breastfeeding support. Critics argued that such spending diverted money from care and that claims of superiority misled patients who could not verify them. These examples explain why the founders want their marketing budget tied to measurable results and their claims tied to published outcomes.

What Has Not Changed

Through all four periods, some features of health care remained. Patients cannot easily judge clinical quality. Referral sources still matter: for a birth center, obstetricians, family physicians and prenatal clinics. Payers still shape choices through coverage. And ethical limits remain: claims must be truthful, fear must not be exploited and patient privacy must be protected in every testimonial and photograph.

The Birth Center's Market Today

Out-of-hospital birth has grown. MacDorman and Declercq (2019) reported that out-of-hospital births rose from 35,578 in 2004 to 62,228 in 2017, about 1 of every 62 births, and that birth center births more than doubled over the period. Growth reflects both demand and a market still small enough that many families do not know birth centers exist or whether their insurance covers them.

Lesson One: Marketing Starts With Research

Following the broadened view of marketing, the founders will survey families at prenatal yoga classes, pediatric offices and online parent groups before designing their services and messages. They want to learn what families fear about hospital birth, what they fear about birth outside a hospital, how far they will drive and which sources they trust, because each answer will change what the center offers and how it describes itself.

Lesson Two: Referral Relationships Still Matter

Families increasingly choose for themselves, but obstetricians and the hospital's labor unit remain essential partners for consultation and transfer. The center's first marketing activity will be meetings with those clinicians, not advertisements.

Lesson Three: Reviews Are Marketing

The digital era turns every experience into marketing, for better or worse.

Every family's experience will become a public review. The center will plan how to invite reviews and respond to them within privacy rules, never confirming a person is a patient in a public reply.

Lesson Four: Price and Coverage Are Part of the Message

Families want to know whether their insurance covers birth center care. Clear information on coverage and self-pay packages will appear on the website from the start, along with an explanation of what happens to coverage if a family transfers to the hospital during labor, the question founders expect to hear most often.

Lesson Five: Honesty Is a Competitive Advantage

The center will describe who is a good candidate for birth center care and who is not, and explain its hospital transfer arrangements openly. In a field where trust is the product, overpromising is the fastest way to fail.

Conclusion

Health care marketing moved from professional silence to research-driven service design, competitive service-line promotion and today's consumer and digital era. The founders' disagreement has an answer in that history: a birth center should market, but in the broadened sense, researching families' needs, building referral relationships, being findable and honest online and making coverage clear. Those lessons will shape the market analysis in the weeks ahead.

References

Hanauer, D. A., Zheng, K., Singer, D. C., Gebremariam, A., & Davis, M. M. (2014). Public awareness, perception, and use of online physician rating sites. JAMA, 311(7), 734-735. https://doi.org/10.1001/jama.2013.283194

Kotler, P., & Levy, S. J. (1969). Broadening the concept of marketing. Journal of Marketing, 33(1), 10-15. https://doi.org/10.1177/002224296903300103

MacDorman, M. F., & Declercq, E. (2019). Trends and state variations in out-of-hospital births in the United States, 2004-2017. Birth, 46(2), 279-288. https://doi.org/10.1111/birt.12411