Physicians' Perception on the Relevance of Healthcare Marketing in a Tertiary Hospital, South-West, Nigeria.

BACKGROUND

Developing nations like Nigeria lose an appreciable percentage of their revenue through medical tourism. The majority of the elite class is not even aware that some of the Medical care sourced in the western climes can readily be accessed locally in some of the healthcare facilities around, amounting to a load of missed opportunities some of which would have been avoided through effective healthcare marketing. This study assessed the perception of healthcare providers on healthcare marketing in Obafemi Awolowo University Teaching Hospital, Ile Ife, Osun State, Nigeria.

METHODOLOGY

This is a cross-sectional study. Data collection was by simple random sampling with the aid of a self-administered questionnaire among 190 medical doctors working at Obafemi Awolowo University Teaching Hospital, Ile-Ife. The quantitative data were entered and analyzed using IBM SPSS Statistics version 22. Univariate and bivariate modes of analysis were employed to determine associations between socio-demographic characteristics and the perception of healthcare providers on healthcare marketing. The level of significance was defined at a 95%, confidence interval (p<0.005).

RESULTS

The majority of the respondents (79.6%) had good knowledge about services rendered in the facility and a good perception (86.9%) about healthcare marketing with significant association with their specialties as more of the surgically related specialties (93%) recommended healthcare marketing. Among the respondents, (85.6%) agreed that public hospitals have to provide information about the services they offer; (93.4%) agreed that patients have the right to receive information about the services offered, and (63.5%) did not agree that marketing in healthcare is unethical. More than sixty percent of the respondents (62.3%) agreed that healthcare marketing will reduce medical tourism and improve service quality (74.3%). Majority (85%) of the respondents recommended that their healthcare facility should invest in healthcare marketing.

CONCLUSION

The study revealed that a high proportion of healthcare providers have a good perception of healthcare marketing and will support their facility's investment in it as this will improve the quality services and increase patients patronage within the health sector.