Futurescan is a national survey conducted by the Society for Healthcare Strategy & Market Development (SHSMD)–an organization we’ve followed for years. In this year’s report, the common theme we see is  that things are getting really interesting in healthcare marketing.

Rather than fearing the unknown, seasoned marketers should be thinking, “Now’s a good time to really apply our skills.”

• Population Health Management–aligning marketing efforts around disease states and conditions–sounds a lot like needs-based marketing to us. Though “most of us have little to no experience with [the former]” we have a wealth of experience with the latter.
• Consumerism has long been king, but is now finding its way into healthcare: “With declining margins, hospitals will need to carefully assess their competitive strengths and weaknesses and refocus their business strategy around activities that deliver the greatest value” (hopefully to the patient/community, right?). See our earlier post on this topic.
• Increased competition, transparency, consolidation, aggregation–elements of business Darwinism in action where only the valued will survive: “New organizations will emerge to fill newly discovered, unmet needs as the system consolidates.”
• Conditions are right for Palliative Care to move more into the mainstream: Medicare does not allow patients to obtain hospice treatment and disease treatment simultaneously; in the US the median length of stay in hospice is 2-3 weeks; 30 percent receive hospice for less than a week (NHCO 2012)
• Organizations have the opportunity to enhance their reputations based on their ability to make lemonade out of lemons: the Baldrige Criteria is adding a “focus on dealing with strategy in uncertain times.”