According to Alex Lubarsky of Health Media, there’s more to great marketing than just doing great work. You have to teach, too.
“Understanding marketing is crucial. If educating the public about your service is not incorporated into the cost of doing business, if it is something that comes as an afterthought rather then top-of-mind, true success will always be just around the corner French-kissing your competition. You will either learn to embrace marketing or you will always be at the mercy of those who do.”
Lubarsky says healthcare is suffering most from this too-often overlooked marketing technique. And that’s why docs are so out of touch when it comes to how healthcare actually works.
“With what is the ultimate insult to the health care industry, by a self-perpetuating bureaucracy, all controls of the helm will be placed in the hands of a few ‘selfless’ politicians. Most doctors will capitulate to the virtual subjugation by an emboldened, oppressive system that will have them working in the proverbial cubical, as third-party bureaucrats slowly kill independent George.”
But allow us to stop the out-of-control spinning that is the healthcare system. Lubarsky reminds us what Direct Care docs all around the country stand for every single day. With every extended visit, every house call, and every personal patient conversation they have, this is what they’re thinking:
“It’s not about money. It’s about freedom, and it’s about practicing medicine that touches your soul, makes you excited to go to work, and doing it on your own terms, not to mention, makes some kind of an impact in the sobbingly-sad and epidemically-deadly health statistics of generation Y and her children.”
By educating patients on their health rather than prescribing meds and sending them out the door, Direct Care physicians are doing the very thing Lubarsky suggests, and some. They’re educating while doing great work. Like so many other things with the Direct Care model, those involved can have the best of both worlds.