Health Promotion in the Marketplace - Patient Satisfaction as the Basis of a Marketing Strategy

This article looks at prevention in the context of recent policy initiatives in the UK which have created new roles and new opportunities for general practitioners (GPs) and primary care. One such opportunity is the potential to actively market preventive services in order to retain and attract patients in a competitive market. We first describe this context and then provide an example of how a patient satisfaction survey can be an effective market-research tool. The results from a district-wide survey are evaluated in terms of socio-demographic differences which stratify the patient market into segments which are aware of, users of and are satisfied with preventive services and those who are not. This article illustrates how GPs can use data of this kind when developing investment and marketing strategies.