Communication — An important management task in the hospital market

Introduction Corporate communication is considered a top management task in the healthcare system and especially in the hospital environment. This was not always the case. Over the years, the changing and growing competitive market has strongly advanced the professionalism of communication, public relations and marketing in private as well as in public hospitals. Especially for private providers who have entered the market within the last few years, it is of vital importance to have a sophisticated communication concept and structure to quickly build and maintain a strong corporate identity and respectable image and reputation. The hospitals I got to know as a young intern, more than 15 years ago, did not employ public relations or communication consultants. In most hospitals, external and internal communication was a long-neglected field. Even if hospitals employed public relations or communication consultants, their tasks were mostly confined to organising open-house events and publishing patient brochures. Communication concepts and communication strategies were foreign words for most hospital managers. Communication was accepted as a costly chore, accorded little credit by the medical or administrative management. A radical change came within the last one and a half decades, as more private healthcare companies appeared on the hospital market and an increasingly competitive environment was promoted. New regulatory frameworks and cost structures have forced hospitals to curb rising costs while increasing output and improving performance. To be able to survive and grow in this market, hospitals must become customer and serviceoriented healthcare centres. Besides traditional nursing and medical care, patient-centred services are becoming increasingly important.