Biomedical subjects
Publications and source records attributed to D A Sumrall.
This article describes the methods used to complete a recent community health needs assessment study in a rural area. It illustrates the strategic marketing and management value of conducting this type of assessment by examining selected results from the study and discussing their implications for the local health care delivery system.
The selling activities of 272 salespeople were identified by polling 122 health care services organizations nationwide. A taxonomy of sales jobs was developed to classify the range of selling tasks within health care. The taxonomy is presented, discussed, and compared with a similar industrial one. Managerial implications and suggestions for future research are discussed.
The authors examine the sales orientation of the hospital and how it relates to the implementation of sales management policies. By polling sales managers and marketing directors at 136 hospitals nationwide, they develop scales to measure hospital sales orientation and sales management policies, and explore the relationship between them.
The authors report the findings of a national survey of hospital sales programs. They measure the degree to which hospitals have implemented sales policies and examine differences between the hospitals.
For successful adaptation to changing environmental conditions, hospital organizational cultures must incorporate the marketing concept to enhance flexibility and orientation toward the external environment. The authors propose procedures for diagnosing a hospital's culture and determining how well it has adopted and implemented the marketing concept.
Getting the marketing concept understood and accepted is one of the biggest challenges faced by a hospital. The authors discuss a variety of issues related to the process of changing a hospital's internal cultural values and managing those changes needed to embrace the marketing concept as part of the overall hospital culture.