Marketing Strategy of the University of Pennsylvania Health System

In my HCMG 203 course - Clinical Issues in Health Management, I had the opportunity to attend a lecture University of Pennsylvania Health System’s marketing strategy by the Chief Marketing Officer Suzanne H. Sawyer. Penn Med’s primary objectives are: develop profitable customer relationships; participate with the all major local and regional commercial payers and local managed care organizations; maintain niche of providing high-acquity, complex care; participate in large market specialties; design a full porfortlio of delivery; build competitive advantages of academic medical centers; leverage barriers to entry from competition; seek innovation and update techniques; maintain brand equity; and target specific segments and advertise to them with focus on brand.

Here are typical steps for developing a strategy: 1. Find a market. For example, there is a market consisting of patients with chronic heart disease. 2. Use Cluster Analysis to determine specific patients segments. For example, its research reveals distinct segments among heart disease patients: middle class, the wealthy, the poor who live far from HUP, elderly, adolescents, young adults, and individuals prone to disease because of heart malformations, poor physical fitness, etc. 3. Select and target a specific segment. For example, it selects the poor who live far from HUP. 4. Identify context, collaborators, and competitors. For example, Penn Med becomes cognizant that the poor live far from HUP because of gentrification and cannot afford to travel to HUP on Medicaid. Collaborators are Medicaid, insurance companies, media, public facilities, and public transportation. And competitors are hospitals and medical facilities located closer to impoverished areas. 5. Develop a position and marketing mix. For example, Penn Med opts to maintain its brand of providing affordable, high quality, and top-notch care. It uses media, such as television and radio, to reach individuals in poor neighborhoods. It places ads that promote its services at train stops, libraries, government offices, and in the trolley and buses. It may create a bus service for the patients that live that furthest away and subsidize the fees.