What forms of marketing were used to promote hospitals’

services? implemented a full program of community services, from dinners for seniors to wellness programs at health clubs to educational seminars. The marketing initiative was so impressive that it boasted Charles Schwab as the chair of the board’s marketing committee and was considered newsworthy enough to be featured on the Today Show.

All of their innovative programs had very respectable returns on investment, despite (or maybe because of) the fact that they spared no expense on promotions. Corporations were eager to offer a suite of health services to their executives, consumers loved the urgent care clinic, and sports medicine boomed along with the wellness craze of the 1970s.

Despite the apparent success of the hospital’s aggressive marketing program, the process soon experienced an ironic twist. Within two years of pulling off this marketing miracle, one which nearly every other hospital in the country was eager to copy, Ann Fyfe and the hospital’s CEO were summarily fired by the physician-dominated hospital board.

As a fledging healthcare marketer, Fyfe had not heard anything about physicians. She was busy listening to customers, and they loved what the hospital was doing. However, the medical staff was an entirely different type of hospital customer. To some physicians, the hospital represented direct competition, in that physicals and urgent care patients were being diverted away from their practices. For most staff doctors, however, it was a more visceral reaction: This slick marketing approach felt sleazy, commercial, and inappropriate, and the culture of medicine was simply not ready for it.