Signature 410-Non-Profit Healthcare Organization-A Comprehensive Study
Introduction

Catholic Health Initiatives (CHI) is a non-profit organization that consists of four separate national Catholic health systems that were combined under CHI over the past three decades. CHI offers assisted living services, nursing home services, memory care, rehabilitation care, hospital care, adult day care services, and many other health care services around the nation. It has recently merged with Dignity Health becoming one of the largest health services conglomerates in the U.S. This paper will discuss the marketing strategies employed by CHI, its financial situation, partnerships and strategic planning.

Marketing Strategies

The marketing strategies used by CHI include TV, digital-marketing with content and social media, print ads and even outdoor advertising to help make CHI more popular among the different communities throughout the states in which it operates (CHI, 2018). As Doster (2013) and Jackson (2011) show, social media is one of the most popular forms of communication used among people today. CHI uses a variety of social marketing techniques, from social media publishing to outdoor advertising. Representatives also play a large role in promoting the company’s services to potential clients who may be interested.

The company’s high degree of social marketing allows it to be visible and popular in different regions and formats. As marketing encompasses all aspects of one’s business—from how the products or services are priced, how the product or services are offered, where they are offered, who the people are who are providing the product or service, how the product is promoted to how the services are distributed and so on—marketing is essential to the performance of the company overall. Today, social media plays a tremendous role in social marketing—but CHI does not rely solely on social media. It has a strong Internet presence, with a blog entitled Imagine Better where a variety of different articles, colorful pictures, and videos showing the quality of care provided by CHI can be found. Packaging and positioning are two ways in which effective marketing can be accomplished (Ampuero & Vila, 2006), and CHI excels at both with its Internet presence, offering a clean, crisp website with easy access to the types of information that clients are likely to want to find. Basically these are the 7 P’s of marketing philosophy: product, price, place, people, promotion, packaging and positioning—each one of these P’s represents an aspect of what it means to market a business (Ivy, 2008).

The company’s Internet presence is quite large, as it operates numerous different websites, blogs and social media platforms. It has many different Internet channels that are used to bring casual browsers to its webpages and its websites offer detailed information with contact numbers where people can go to collect even more data from a person directly associated with the company. The websites offer information about the company, what it does, where it has been, where it has come from, its history, its focus, its purpose, its aims, its values and its mission. All of this information is published on the Internet making the Internet one of the best ways in which this company markets itself to the public. As the Internet is one of the primary means of sharing information in today’s digital world and the society has now entered into the era of “Digital Natives”—i.e., a point in time in which those born after 1981 have grown up with digital technology (Prensky, 2001)—it makes sense that this is going to be the strong suit of the company. It does require a great deal of investment to operate so many sites and to have them look professional but the purpose of this is to visible in the virtual space, which is where so many people go now for data.

Financial Information

All of CHI’s financial information can be found in its most recent annual report from 2018. CHI has seen its revenue grow from admissions thanks to reductions in labor costs and through a restructuring of the organization, which has been needed because of the merger with Dignity Health (Annual Report, 2018). However, the company does have considerable losses, year over year, with operating EBIDA and operating losses totally $477.6 million and $442.9 million respectively (Annual Report, 2018). The company explains these losses by way of the company’s experiencing declines in volume, which it notes are part of an industry trend. However, compared to losses sustained in 2017, the company has cut losses significantly.

The company is also divesting some of its assets, such as the Medicare Advantage health insurance operation that it has run in the past in Washington, and it is also intending to sell QualChoice in Arkansas (Annual Report, 2018). The company is reinvesting in itself...…organization is up to and what it plans to do to make it all happen. By sharing the objectives of its strategic plan, the company is able to say to investors and potential partners exactly what its aims are and how it plans to achieve those goals. The goal here is to know what the risks are, the likelihood of the risks, how to rank the risks, and how to deal with the risks.

CHI is very open and honest about its plan, and for good reason: as the biggest health care conglomerate in the U.S. via its merger with Dignity Health, it has a need to represent its plans to stakeholders. However, its plan has a degree of flexibility to it so that it is not rigidly confined in its outlook. Flexibility is essential to the strategic plan succeeding as Bryson (1988) emphasizes. New internal and external obstacles, opportunities and threats are constantly going to arise and require that the organization and the Board of Trustees be willing and able to deal with them. If one is too rigidly attached to a plan, one will be blindsided when an unforeseen attack is mounted.

Summary

CHI is using social marketing to become more visible throughout the States. It has a strong Internet presence and is making use of the 7 P’s of marketing so that it can accomplish great things in the future. CHI is improving its financial positioning by continuing to reduce costs while simultaneously expanding its footprint. It is also developing key partnerships with groups and organizations in the regions it operates while divesting itself of assets it no longer sees as core to its mission or vision. In terms of having a strategic plan over the next five years, it is focusing on ministry, energy, community care and values. However, it is also remaining flexible in its vision. Flexibility means being able to adapt a strategic plan to include new developments in the industry and new threats that manifest over time. The more strategic a plan, the more likely it will be to adjust and be flexible. Strategy is not strategy if it is so rigid that it collapses at the smallest resistance. Strategy has to be able to encounter new twists and turns and respond like an agile car that has been designed to handle anything the road might…