1. Today many doctors have patient portals. A patient portal is a location where the consumer can log on and see their medical data. They can see their lab results, results from prior years, make appointment, request scripts, watch videos, etc. Do you think most patients are capable of understanding their lab results they see online without a doctor's interpretation?
2. Technological advances have made it possible and necessary for health care professionals to communicate in different ways. It is important to understand not only how to effectively communicate, but also to know to whom you are communicating. For example, nurses will communicate differently to a physician than they would to a patient. Also, it is important to proofread text messages and emails more than once prior to sending. Certainly the forms of communication have changed dramatically in the last decade. I work with multiple surgeons, and their method of communicating with patients is face to face, with doctors, via web conferencing, and their office staff work on the patient portal. Today we also have more technological equipment in the OR that is used to communicate to the doctor vitals, perfusion, and a host of other patient data. We are also seeing a strong trend in global surgeries, where it is being performed by a surgeon in one location, while another in another country is showing how to do the surgery. With so many different ways to communicate, how do we know we are communicating effectively?
3. What are the pros and cons of government agencies (i.e., agencies within the Health and Human Services umbrella)? Are these agencies effective?
4. The FDA actually tests less than 1% of our food for safety. They usually do not get involved with products unless there are outbreaks of diseases, such as Salmonella. The little that they do test are usually imported from specific countries known for unsafe foods. They also do not test food supplements, such as St. Johns Wort, and other popular ones OTC.
What about other agencies such as the CDC or the Office of Aging?
5. When you communicate, you also need to decide how you will tailor it - will you communicate to the masses or to the individual, or will it be to a select group? Can anyone give examples?
6. There are many ways to establish the marketing function for an organization, two of the more common ways are by product and by market. The product oriented structure is the more common method used in health care marketing. For this structure the product line manager is responsible for the bulk of the responsibility and accountability. Many times this person is the nurse. Now for the market oriented structure a health care organization may design a marketing campaign around its major customer groups, but the focus will be on the customers who have purchasing requirements such as large corporations. Can anyone provide examples of how their organization structures marketing?
7. Define conformity and give an example. Name three reasons why people conform.
8. Give examples of disadvantages of advertising.
9. Social media originated in 2002 and allows us to build social networks with people who share similar interests. Social media is highly accessible and represents a shift in how people share information. It's a fuse of sociology and technology. Social media has improved how we can outreach to particular communities whether it be by: internal to the organization, geographically isolated, disease specific, demographically oriented, or widespread to the masses. Yet, the FDA has a problem with social media. What is that problem?
10. You work for your local public health department and they have asked you to create a 1 page paper to be sent out to your community describing the state of your health care market.
Research your local community.
Describe- include the following:
• Cultural demographics of your community
• Age breakdown of your community
• How the demographics and age affect your local health care market.