Scott MacStravic, Ph.D.
The idea of organizing, managing, and marketing traditional “reactive” diagnostic and treatment services by service lines is decades old and widely practiced. It works when and because it persuades customers that a given provider has better, preferably the best service in a particular category, such as heart disease, diabetes, maternity, neurosciences, orthopedics, etc. And it can add a “halo effect” advantage, when consumers conclude that a provider with excellence in one high-tech service must also be excellent in others.
For full-service hospitals and multi-specialty medical groups, service-line marketing can get pretty expensive. Each service, or at least a large number, must be separately advertised, multiplying the cost significantly. But with so much competition from single-specialty centers and practices, they must do so, while focusing particularly on service lines that are most profitable, since that is where competition is fiercest.
The service-line focus is potentially far more effective than “institutional” advertising that attempts to persuade prospects that they should choose the organization vs. the service – at least where everyone else is focused on service lines. But it has a built-in inefficiency – it must “win” patients over and over again, since the vast majority of them do not come repeatedly for the same service. Visits, stays, and episodes of care are usually so infrequent that there is only a modest carryover of satisfaction when the time comes to choose another time, and when it is a different service, that is likely to be even weaker.
Moreover, the marketing of services is operating in a different market today.
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