Marketing communication management level as a healthcare organizations competitiveness tool

Abstract

The importance of marketing communications in health care is increasing within the context of competitiveness. Even though hospitals are often merely passive recipients of patients, more and more hospitals realize that a patient may choose a hospital where he/she will be treated and so the competitive pressure on the services quality, communication standards and approach of hospital staff to clients is increasing. The Czech Republic's vision lies also in privatizing and restructuring of hospitals, which would affect not only the business management of healthcare organization, but also significantly affect the general management of the organization. A hospital would become a regular part of the market and marketing management would become a competitiveness tool. The aim of the article is to present individual healthcare systems, define the marketing communication role in hospital management, present marketing communication as an important competitiveness tool of healthcare organizations marketing management and evaluate the scope and level of usage of respective marketing communication tools in selected healthcare organizations in the Czech Republic.