Men: Untapped market waiting for a hospital just like yours

by Andrea J. Simon Are men and men's health part of your hospital or healthcare system's growth strategy? Should they be? Let me share a case study that might change your mind about men's health. I was working with Hurley Medical Center in Flint, Mich., from 2010 to 2012, helping it find new ways to grow its patient base. Its market was saturated. The three competing hospitals in Genesee County had essentially divided up the inpatient market equally. Among the three, outpatient volumes were rather similar as well. So when we began to work with Hurley we went looking for non-users who needed a hospital to search for them. Serendipity is often the best research Sometimes the best ideas come from serendipity, from an unexpected moment. For Hurley, one of its marketing folks had that a-ha moment when he realized his father could actually be typical of a new patient market space that the hospital had been ignoring--men. So many men like his father were without doctors. While is father was a retired General Motors employee who always had insurance, he had never really had a doctor. When his dad became ill, the son realized his father was both a problem and an opportunity. Without a doctor and without a medical home or consistent continuous care, his father had no one to care about him. He could not simply rely on the emergency room doctors at the hospital. Research makes a compelling case We began to dig further. We dove into a wealth of research from the Men's Healt...
Source: hospital impact - Category: Health Managers Authors: Source Type: blogs