Happy employees lead to loyal patients. Survey of nurses and patients shows a strong link between employee satisfaction and patient loyalty.

A strong relationship exists between employee satisfaction and patients' perceptions of the quality of their care, measured in terms of their intent to return and to recommend the hospital to others. Employee dissatisfaction can negatively affect quality of care and have an adverse effect on patient loyalty and, thus hospital profitability. Therefore, health care marketers should regularly measure employee satisfaction as one way to monitor service quality. Health care marketers must work more closely with their human-resource departments to understand and influence employees' work environment and maintain a high level of job satisfaction. Marketers also should place an increased emphasis on both employee and patient perceptions of satisfaction when developing internal and external strategic marketing plans and formulating future research.

Reforming the health care system: implications for health care marketers.

Health care reform has become the dominant domestic policy issue in the United States. President Clinton, and the Democratic leaders in the House and Senate have all proposed legislation to reform the system. Regardless of the plan which is ultimately enacted, health care delivery will be radically changed. Health care marketers, given their perspective, have a unique opportunity to ensure their own institutions' success. Organizational, managerial, and marketing strategies can be employed to deal with the changes which will occur. Marketers can utilize personal strategies to remain proactive and successful during an era of health care reform. As outlined in this article, responding to the health care reform changes requires strategic urgency and action. However, the strategies proposed are practical regardless of the version of health care reform legislation which is ultimately enacted.

Providing services to obstetrical patients: an overview and implications.

Obstetrics is one of the few hospital services with the potential for developing favorable client relationships resulting in increased market share, repeat purchase behavior, and referral of other patients in a direct marketing environment. To determine what qualities women find appealing in an obstetrics service and if women's preferences for a specific type of birthing arrangement had been examined and reported, a review of the literature was carried out. After reviewing the extant literature, the article provides strategic implications for health care marketers.

Choosing a hospital: analysis of consumer tradeoffs.

In today's competitive health care industry, hospital administrators and marketers must determine how important various product/service attributes are to potential consumers and how those attributes influence consumer choice decisions. The authors outline an approach (the analytic hierarchy process) that can be used to assess or predict health care choice decisions by consumers. The analytic hierarchy process is a method for analyzing consumer choice behavior whereby a hierarchical structure is used to determine the relative preferences of consumers for health care alternatives. Marketing strategies based on the study findings are suggested.