Healthcare is one of the largest industries and with so many options (as well as
“Dr. Google”) it’s important for marketers to know the strategies to reach patients.
Christopher Caserta, Vice President for Strategic Development at United States
Medical Management, joins us to discuss how marketers are changing the healthcare
industry, as well as how the industry has evolved on the WVU Marketing
Communications Today podcast.
Susan Jones: Sure, so let's start with something very general: we've all heard
the term healthcare industry, but what exactly does that mean and what does that
encompass?
Christopher Caserta: You know Susan I think that's a common term that people
will undershoot. They will just limit it to basically what they know. You know
chances are you know, in today's time you were probably born in a hospital or you,
you have family members who were born in a hospital so that comes to mind. Maybe
you've had a family member in an assisted living facility or skilled nursing facility,
and we all use pharmacies as well, at least most of us do unless you're uber healthy.
If you are, I would like to know what your secrets are. Otherwise it's just kind
of what we know, but in actuality healthcare is a huge industry, I mean it's actually
our largest contributor to the gross domestic product in this country. I know it's
grown significantly in the last 50 years; it is ahead of technology in the United
States when you talk about an industry, industry and how big it is, and it kind
of breaks down into six categories. You know, there are pharmaceuticals which those
are obviously the medications to hear and vaccinate, we all know them with a pandemic
we're all well aware of what goes on there. Biotechnology is another industry using
enzymes or microorganisms to produce products, you know you think of baking bread
because you're using yeast with the living organism that would qualify biotech.
You have the equipment side, devices for like pacemakers and ultrasound imaging
you have to have distribution, which is actually a category under healthcare because
there's hundreds of thousands of pharmacies and hospitals that need medicines and
products for patients. You have the facilities; I mean that's what we see that's
usually where people go when they think of healthcare and then you have the manage
healthcare side. I think we've all probably read about health maintenance organizations
and other types of groups or ways to have healthcare and pay for healthcare. So
really when you include all those when you look at the healthcare industry there's
over 784,000 companies in the United States right now. So, and the good news for
those of us in this field is they all need strategy, they all need sales and they
all need marketing so it's a wonderful opportunity and only getting bigger.