Introduction
Rehabilitation centers are different from the a typical medical center in a way that the latter focus more on the rehabilitation of patients with acute and or chronic physical conditions while the latter focuses primarily in the diagnosis and management of a wider mix of medical, not just physical, conditions. Examples of professionals who get assigned in rehabilitation centers are physical therapists, occupational therapists, speech therapists, physiatrists, nutritionists, and even nurses. One example of a good and credible local rehabilitation center is the University of Maryland Rehabilitation and Orthopedic Institute. It is basically an arm of the University of Maryland. The objective of this paper is to discuss the different mechanisms how the management at UM Rehabilitation and Orthopedic Institute maintain and improve their products and services, and also how they develop new ones, and what the historical and perceived effects of such mechanisms would be. The analysis and discussion of such mechanisms will focus on aspects like their impact on the medical facility’s performance, the marketing research process, market segmentation strategies, the marketing research tools, and the technology and information resources involved, and also the applicability of the four stages of the product life cycle on the product and or service development, maintenance, and improvement mechanisms at UM Rehabilitation and Orthopedic Institute.
The rehabilitation center being discussed in this paper is not in any way related to the medical and or mental facilities involved in drugs, mental disorders, and or abnormal behaviors. The rehabilitation center being discussed in this paper are those that are involved with the diagnosis and management of physical and other medical disorders such as neuropathies, muscle strain, ligament sprain, Anterior Cruciate Ligament reconstruction rehabilitation just to name a few. The following is a list of physical medicine and rehabilitation products and services being offered in rehabilitation centers of which UM Rehabilitation and Orthopedic Institute is a good example: physical therapy, occupational therapy, speech therapy, and the prescription and manufacture of a wide range of custom or pre-made orthotic and prosthetic devices.
There is one common purpose of all the products and services being offered at the UM Rehabilitation and Orthopedic Institute and that is to bring back a patient regardless whether he is an in or an out-patient to his or her premorbid status. Examples of people that usually get treated in a rehabilitation center are stroke patients, patients of major joint surgeries (e.g. ACL tear, meniscal tear, fractures, dislocations, and etc.), and radiculopathy patients. Physical therapists offer their services to prevent the physical degeneration associated with the abovementioned medical conditions and procedures; the same is also true for the speech and occupational therapists, the physiatrists, and the makers of orthotic and prosthetic devices.
The UM Rehabilitation and Orthopedic Institute can both benefit from performing a portfolio analysis and using differential advantages in their marketing strategy. Firstly, for the portfolio analysis, they can start by reviewing their current market share and the market’s current growth rate. By focusing on these two, the management at UM Rehabilitation and Orthopedic Institute would be able to objectively tell whether it would be a good decision to spend more on improving their products and services, or scrap everything altogether and start from scratch. As explained by the principles of each of the product life cycles, there will come a time when the market will be fully saturated. At that point, sales will become low and consumers will start looking for new alternatives to the products and or services being offered. So, by doing a portfolio analysis, the management would be able to know the right thing to do to protect the company’s future. The use of differential advantages on the other hand could be used to solve the dilemma brought about by market saturation. By creating differential advantages, the company would be able to benefit from a fully or a nearly saturated market. By the time the consumers have already started looking for product and service alternatives, there would be some good chance that those consumers would go back to the company that offered the products and services that saturated the market, given that there are indeed differential advantages such as better features and increased quality of output and services, and etc. In the case of UM Rehabilitation and Orthopedic Institute however, the market can never be really fully saturated because there will always be people who will need the products and services being offered by a rehabilitation center. The numbers of patients every year do not really decrease. The trend is more of an upward rather than downward.
The Importance of Technology in Providing Patients with clear and Accessible Information about Health Care Organizations and The Products and Services that they Provide
Technology is something that has been ubiquitous not only in every person’s personal life but also in different business industries. In this case, we are talking about the allied medical and healthcare industry. UM Rehabilitation and Orthopedic Institute has done a lot of things to ensure that information about their products and services will be clear and accessible to their potential clients. One of the best things they did was they established an interactive website that any potential client residing in or near Maryland can visit. Their website features dedicated webpages that lists their contact information and gives good background information about the nature of their products and services. According to a research published by the Journal of Communications of the ACM in 2013, using technology can be a good way to boost the cost-effectiveness and efficiency of medical facilities and institutions . The use of a website can indeed make the lives of people that need physical medicine and rehabilitation products and services a lot easier. Firstly, they do not have to be on-site if all they want to do is to inquire about the price and the involved procedures in a rehabilitation service. Technology in this case has two benefits: it lets both the medical facility and the prospective customers save time and it also lets both save resources , not to mention the access that it gives UM Rehabilitation and Orthopedic Institute to a larger state-wide and even international market.
Survey Outline for Capturing Market Expectations
One of the best and most established ways to determine what the market consumers are expecting from a particular product or service is to conduct a survey . The UM Rehabilitation and Orthopedic Institute can for example implement a patient satisfaction survey policy in which they would ask each of the patients to answer a survey that identifies what they liked the most and the least about the company’s product or service from the initial point of contact to the point of delivering the product or services. The following are examples of basic questions that the UM Rehabilitation and Orthopedic Institute can include in their patient satisfaction survey.
- What did you like the most about the product/service?
- What did you like the least or dislike about the product/service?
- Rate the delivery of the product/service from a scale of 1 to 10, with 1 being the worst and 10 being the best.
- What suggestions do you have in mind so that your demands and expectations would be more effectively and efficiently provided in the future?
References
Tyagi, R., Cook, L., Olson, J., & Belohlav, J. (BMC Health Services Research). Healthcare Technologies, Quality Improvement Programs and Hospital Organizational Culture in Canadian Hospitals. 2013: 1-20.
U.S. Department of Health and Human Services. (2013). Health Center Patient Satisfaction Surveys. U.S. Department of Health and Human Services.
Wing, J., & Guzdia, M. (Journal of Communications of the ACM). Encouraging IT Usage in Future Healthcare, Quality in CS Education. 2013: 14-15.
