Marketers should expect a long and difficult 2009. The pressure for proven returns on marketing expenditures will increase, and more agency consolidations and single client-single agency alignments are likely. Marketers should avoid long-term commitments on advertising time and space as spot market rates for media will become progressively more attractive. In this posting, John Quelch outlines eight factors companies should keep in mind when making their marketing plans for 2008 and 2009.
Beginning today, Medicare will stop paying hospitals for the added cost of treating patients who are injured in their care. Medicare has put 10 "reasonably preventable" conditions on its initial list, saying it will not pay when patients receive incompatible blood transfusions, develop infections after certain surgeries, or must undergo a second operation to retrieve a sponge left behind from the first. Serious bed sores, injuries from falls, and urinary tract infections caused by catheters are also on the list. Officials believe that the regulations could apply to several hundred thousand hospital stays of the 12.5 million Medicare covers annually. The policy will also prevent hospitals from billing patients directly for costs generated by medical errors.
A national campaign is trying to get Mexicans to collectively trim about 2 million pounds. The project is one of several new efforts to fight obesity in Mexico, which is on track to catch up with the United States within a decade as one of the world's fattest countries. Nearly half of Mexico's 110 million people are overweight, and the number of fat children has climbed 8% a year in the last decade.
Officials with Williamson Medical Center and Saint Thomas Hospital have broken ground on the 45,000-square-foot Tollgate Village Medical Pavilion in Thompson's Station, TN. In the joint venture, the two hospitals are coming together as Williamson Saint Thomas Community Health LLC and will share 30,000 square feet in the three-story building. The remaining 15,000 square feet will be available for custom-designed medical office suites. The facility will house an urgent-care clinic, women's health services center, a sleep lab, primary-care physicians, physical therapy and imaging as well as dentistry, orthodontics, dermatology, pediatrics and orthopedics.
In developing countries, a scarcity of doctors and trained nurses means there is often no helping hand in times of healthcare need. The health crisis in developing countries is being exacerbated by the West as countries relax stringent immigration regulations to attract doctors and nurses from less developed countries to boost their own flagging health systems while saving money on expensive training, some experts say. This "brain drain" leaves gaping holes in the healthcare systems of developing countries where diseases such as AIDS, tuberculosis, and malaria run rampant and children die daily from diarrhea.
Scores of novice doctors attended a job fair in late September in Manhattan that featured chamber of commerce brochures from small towns and rural areas throughout New York state. Many of the doctors had come from abroad on visas, including the restrictive J-1 exchange visa, which requires them to return home for two years once they finish their studies unless they can get a waiver to work in a medically underserved area. New York state recommends about 30 doctors for J-1 visa waivers annually, and typically half of the visas go to doctors working in urban neighborhoods and half to upstate communities that do not have enough physicians.