Recent issues emanating from persistent conflicts between care providers and patients in government-owned hospitals provided the baseline for this piece. And, of course, trust is the major factor when it comes to healthcare business. Yes, there must be mutual trust and understanding in the value chain for the health system to flourish.
First of all, the law of vulnerability makes it imperative for patients and their relatives to access care as a matter of necessity from government hospitals, especially the poor ones. Here, rules of care give them ample choices in terms of pattern of care, payment for care, and even rejection of care if needs arise.
Unfortunately, a standing instruction of denying patients access to prescription sheets in Kwara government hospitals seems to be a deliberate attempt to make life hell for the poor masses. That medicines procured outside the wall can not have their efficacy guaranteed was the laughable excuse given.
As a public health expert who spent major years in a pharma-supply system, my views are given below correct the situation. Pricing and promotions are elements of marketing mix, hospitals, whether the government or private, need to set a price that is competitive in the market and offer maximum returns. To attain this goal, there are different approaches to pricing and promotion.
Premium Pricing
The approach adopted by premium pricing models is selling products at relatively high prices than that offered by the competitor. The strategy is particularly effective with unique or new products in the market. For example, if a certain health facility is fast in automation, it can offer the services at a relatively higher cost to benefit from the initial stages of the invention before competitors adopt theirs.
Penetration Pricing
The model advocates for a pricing method where facility sets its prices at a low rate than that offered by the competitor; the aim of the approach is to attract a large mass of people to the services. For example, in a hospital setup, the managers may decide to set a consultation fee at a minimum rate so that service charges can be minimized.
Economy Pricing
It is a pricing model that aims to keep the bare price of commodities low; it uses hospital advantages to benefit the larger organization. For example, a hospital can have large procurements of medicine and enjoy economies of scale; the benefit is not only enjoyed by selling medicines cheaply but service can also be offered at a lower rate because of the benefit from large consignments.
Price Skimming
Only hospitals with strong brand name use the strategy; in the approach, the facilities use their name to charge expensively for their goods, as people will believe that they have good services. It is also a strategy to capture the high-class people in the economy who think that expensive is quality.
Psychological Pricing
The approach aims at creating an impression in consumers mind that certain commodity is sold cheaply while it is not always the case it places prices like N99, N99 and N999; it creates a minor distinction, which have a huge benefit to a government.
Promotion
To sell medical services, an hospital needs to advertise and device ways to create awareness of the existence of superior products/service without over pricing the patients; there are two approaches to promotion; PUSH and PULL approaches.
PUSH approach
Under this approach, a health organisation uses the available resources to create awareness and make products affordable to the target customer. It is an approach that uses discounts and low pricing that are irresistible to customers. When the strategy is used, then customers are left “guilty” of not having a certain product, yet it is affordable. In a health facility case, the hospital may set the cost of certain necessary tests at a minimum; then, undertake massive campaigns to create awareness of the facility at the cheap cost.
PULL Approach
Under this approach, massive advertisements and persuasion mechanisms are adopted to ensure that hospitals’ products knowledge of existence has been created.The end user and the promoters are at close links and interact in the course of advertising. The organization aims at creating demand for its products; for example a hospital may have massive campaigns educating people on the need to be immunized against a certain disease, this will create a demand for the service to the benefit of the health facility. To the poor consumers of the services, affordability comes before availability. And no service provider has the liberty of denying people access to care because profit drive. Healthcare, according to Ottawa Charter, 1986, should be a social service for all and sundry. Kwara state should revisit and review her healthcare delivery landscape in the interest of poor masses.
Authored by MUSA, Aliyu, Director, ReliveAid Technologies Limited.RelivedAid.com +2348038521253
He had written a lot of articles on healthcare in Nigeria.
