Product Development

Product Development

HSA 505: Health Services Strategic Marketing

Product Development

Introduction

Panola County Medical Center is a 112-bed hospital that is located in Batesville, Mississippi a rural town with a population of 7,000 people. This hospital has been taking over by many owners in the last couple of years due to finances and customer service. The hospital employed 400 workers which consist of doctors, nurses, administrators and staff. I have been hired as their new administrator at this hospital to develop their new product development practices. My plan is to strengthen their old practices and develop a creative successful one. This is an opportunity to develop a new and improved product development practice. As a newly qualified administrator I will implement new strategies to make it better(McCliment, 2000).

Panola County Medical Center’s purpose of products and life cycle

My job as an administrator is to provide the best quality resources to my patients/clients. I know that this will be a great challenge to change Panola County Medical Center’s patient lift equipment. The lift equipment was old and needed to be replaced with newer ones in order to make the job of transferring patients from wheel chairs, and hospital beds safety and more efficient. The older lift equipment was manual and it would require more assistance from staff and time restraint. Their manual lifts were old and did not serve their patients well because some patients are overweight and require more assistance to be handled. The process of changing their old existing manual lifts to new electric lifts is called awareness or introduction of new electric lifts to the center. My plan is to change their old planning portfolio into a new planning portfolio. This includes changing their manual lifts to new electric lifts, which will help their staff and provide a safe work environment and serve their patients better. I introduced the new product and purchased the new electric lifts for the center. The electric lifts were brand new and were able to raise the patient’s body quickly and allowed a maximum weight capacity of 450 lbs. These electric lifts are not guaranteed to last a lifetime, but they were okay enough even though the manual lifts only had a limited product life cycle. The hospital did not have much money, but it did have enough money to purchase the beds. Now that the electric lifts have been introduced to the center, further evaluation shows that the center is now receiving more patients and is now receiving more profits. This is because the electric lifts are more comfortable, more efficient and that they are now receiving more referrals from friends and family telling people that the new lifts are great. This gives the center more value and helps the hospital serve their patients better(Wozniak, 2016).

Support one strategy to improve the Panola County Medical Center

I will need to install a new marketing mix that will improve the center’s patient care and improve the center’s value. In my planning portfolio, I suggested that the hospital abandon the old planning portfolio and use my new planning portfolio. My new planning portfolio would include having a calm work place and having seminars to help improve the hospital marketing mix and improve the hospital’s value. Having a calm workplace in the center would mean having patient safety. Patient safety is the prevention of harm to patients with an emphasis placed on the system of care delivery that prevents errors, learns from errors that do occur, and is built on a culture of safety that involves health care professionals, organizations, and patients. Seminars will also be installed at the center. The key objectives of the seminars or workshops is to provide participants with simple yet powerful strategies and skills that may be implemented into the lives for the enhanced degree of health, safety, self-awareness, well-being, and quality of life. With these two new strategies implemented into the center’s new planning portfolio the center will have a better marking mix and will also help to increase the center’s value(Marsch, 2014).

The Importance of New Technology

I will need to install new technology at Panola County Medical Center. The center does not have efficient technology for their patients. I will install a new technology that should help provide their patients with all of the needs and wants that they may have. In this era of electronic medical records having educational training and team building in Panola County Medical Center’s planning portfolio should help to satisfy all of their patient’s needs and wants. Their education training would be to give employees the skills they need to become better workers, resulting in financial gains. Other objective would include creating a supportive workplace so that employees know that they are valued and they feel more satisfied at their jobs. Their team building would be as follows. Teamwork is collaboration and enhanced communication. Teamwork is two or more people who interact interdependently with a common purpose, working toward measurable goals that benefit from leadership that maintains stability which encouraging honest discussion and problem solving. The center could also bring in newly trained people to assist in the new patient care(Coatney, 2018).

Panola County Medical Center’s survey to capture patient expectations of service

The survey at Panola County Medical Center is not adequate and effective and doesn’t provide great results. Their surveys do not inform the center about patient experiences while at their center, inform the hospital about patient’s perceptions of the center while at the hospital, or give their patients the opinion of the center while they are at the center. Concerning patient experiences the surveys may not tell the center if their patients are satisfied with the treatment that they may have received while at the center, concerning patients perception of the center the surveys may not tell the hospital if the patients felt that the hospital was clean or not while they were at the center, and about opinions the survey may not tell the center if their patients were satisfied with the patient care provided by the center. Implementing a new survey that would cover all of concerns of the patients might help in addressing all of the above concerns of the patients at Panola County Medical Center. A well-designed and implemented survey could help collect critical patient feedback and could also serve as a tool for improving communication between healthcare providers/staff and patients. A concise, logical, and easy-to-understand survey would likely encourage more participation and more higher-quality information that can improve the center’s patient satisfaction and value(JSchöpf, 2019).

References

Marsch, L., Lord, S., & Dallery, J. (2014). Behavioral Healthcare and Technology: Using Science-Based Innovations to Transform Practice. Oxford University Press.

McCliment, J. K. (2000). ZERO-LIFT. (Cover story). Nursing Homes: Long Term Care Management, 49(11), 20. Retrieved from the Strayer University database.

Coatney, Karen. (2018, January). Big data analytics and healthcare capabilities, the business value of information technology and health care organizations: the need for consensus in evidence-based medical practices. Journal of Medical Research. doi10.22381/AJMR522083. Retrieved from the Strayer University database.

JSchöpf, A. C., Vach, W., Jakob, M., & Saxer, F. (2019). Routine patient surveys: Patients’ preferences and information gained by healthcare providers. PLoS ONE 14(8), 1–14. https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0220495 Retrieved from the Strayer University database.

Wozniak, L. A., Soprovich, A., Rees, S., Johnson, S. T., Majumdar, S. R., & Johnson, J. A. (2016). A qualitative study examining healthcare managers and providers’ perspectives on participating in primary care implementation research.BMC Health Services Research,16, 1–12. https://doi.org/10.1186/s12913-016-1577-1 Retrieved from the Strayer University database.