Responsive Healthcare : Marketing for a Public Service

How should marketing be carried out by publicly funded health services? How must conventional marketing techniques be altered for this purpose? What lessons can be drawn from practical attempts to market healthcare to date?

This comprehensive book covers all main aspects of marketing and describes how conventional marketing methods can be adapted for use in healthcare and publicly funded systems responsible for health promotion and health service planning. Written for busy health service managers and clinical professionals, the book shows how successful marketing can be put into practice. The material is organized according to the different type of marketing task found in health systems: healthcare purchasing, health promotion, public hospital provision, and primary care and consumer research. Responsive Healthcare focuses mainly on the British health system and its recent reforms, but the general themes and lessons to be learned are applicable to most health systems and the book will be of interest to health service managers and clinicians worldwide.

Rod Sheaf, National Primary Care Research and Development Centre, University of Manchester