HCM 325 Module 3 Consumer Behavior Short Paper Example

From Referral to Review: How Women Choose Care in the Cedar Ridge Market

[Student Name]

Southern New Hampshire University

HCM 325: Healthcare Marketing

Module Three Short Paper

[Instructor Name]

[Date]

The organization, setting and figures below are a composite written as a model document. No real employer, client, colleague or patient is described.

From Referral to Review: How Women Choose Care in the Cedar Ridge Market

Market research showed that women in the Cedar Ridge Community Hospital service area often screen elsewhere because of physician referrals and convenience. This paper looks more closely at how patients make these choices, including the role of online ratings, and what the new women's health center can do to earn and keep patients.

The Patient Decision Process

Consumer behavior models describe decisions in stages: recognizing a need, searching for information, evaluating options, choosing and reflecting on the experience afterward. Health care decisions follow this pattern but with differences. The need is often triggered by a physician or a symptom rather than a wish, information is hard for patients to evaluate and the choice may be constrained by insurance networks and referrals.

Who Influences the Choice

For mammography, the need usually arises at a primary care visit, and the physician's office often schedules the test at a default location. For obstetric care, women typically search more actively, asking friends, checking insurance networks and reading reviews. The center's strategy must therefore differ by service: influence physicians' defaults for screening and win women's own comparisons for obstetric care.

How Many Patients Use Online Ratings

Hanauer et al. (2014) surveyed a national sample of U.S. adults and found that most were aware of online physician rating sites and roughly a third had sought ratings in the past year. Among those who looked, many reported choosing a physician because of good ratings or avoiding one because of poor ratings. Ratings mattered most for patients choosing a new physician, the situation of women selecting an obstetrician.

What Online Reviews Capture

Ranard et al. (2016) analyzed thousands of Yelp reviews of U.S. hospitals and compared them with the federal patient experience survey. Yelp ratings were correlated with survey ratings, but reviews also discussed topics the survey does not cover, such as cost and billing, compassion of staff and the quality of the facility. For marketers, reviews offer a window into what patients notice and care about, in their own words.

What Drives Patient Experience Ratings

Jha et al. (2008) studied hospital patient experience survey results across the United States and found wide variation between hospitals, with better ratings at hospitals with higher nurse staffing and some organizational characteristics, and a modest relationship between patient experience and clinical quality measures. Experience is shaped by how care is organized, not just by marketing.

Cedar Ridge's Reviews

The team analyzed 212 online reviews of Cedar Ridge from the past two years. The average rating was 3.6 out of 5. Positive reviews praised friendly nurses and short emergency waits; negative reviews focused on billing confusion, difficulty reaching departments by phone and parking. Only nine reviews mentioned imaging, mostly about scheduling delays.

Table 1. Themes in 212 Online Reviews of Cedar Ridge

Note. Composite analysis; reviews could mention more than one theme.

Reading Reviews Carefully

Online reviews have limits. Reviewers are not a random sample, extreme experiences are overrepresented and a few reviews can swing an average. Ratings reflect service and convenience more than clinical quality, which patients cannot easily judge. Marketers should use reviews to find service problems and to learn patients' language, not as a measure of medical excellence.

Switching Costs and Loyalty

Patients who already use a provider face switching costs: transferring records, learning a new place, trusting new staff and sometimes asking their physician for a different referral. These costs explain why many women keep screening at the regional system even though Cedar Ridge is closer. Lowering switching costs is part of the marketing strategy: the center will request prior mammograms from other facilities on the patient's behalf, so comparisons with earlier images are possible, and will make the first appointment as easy as a phone call or a few clicks online.

Trust and Word of Mouth

For obstetric care, trust is central, and it spreads through personal networks. Focus group participants said they would ask friends and family before choosing where to deliver a baby and would pay more attention to a friend's story than to an advertisement. The center will invite new mothers to share their experiences, with consent, host open houses where expectant parents can meet nurses and tour the unit and train staff to treat every interaction as something a patient may later describe to others.

Different Decisions, Different Tactics

The analysis suggests two distinct marketing approaches. For screening, where physicians drive the choice and patients rarely compare, the center will focus on physicians, fast results and easy referral. For obstetric care, where women compare actively and trust matters, it will focus on reviews, word of mouth, tours and visible clinical expertise. Treating both services with one campaign would waste effort on the wrong decision-makers.

Designing the Experience First

Because experience drives reviews, and reviews influence new patients, the best marketing for the center is a good experience. Based on the review themes, the center will offer online and direct-line scheduling, provide cost estimates before appointments, reserve parking near the entrance and send screening results to both patient and physician within 24 hours.

Responding to Reviews

The center will respond to reviews within two business days, thanking positive reviewers and inviting those with complaints to call a named manager. Responses will never confirm that a reviewer was a patient or discuss health information, since privacy rules apply even online. Patterns in complaints will be reported monthly to the center's director.

Encouraging Honest Reviews

After each visit, patients will receive a short survey with an optional link to leave a public review. The center will not offer incentives for positive reviews or discourage negative ones, which would be misleading and could violate platform rules.

Conclusion

Patients choose providers through referrals, convenience and, increasingly, online reviews that reflect service experience. For the new women's health center, understanding that process means influencing physicians' referral defaults for screening, earning women's trust for obstetric care and building the experience that generates good reviews honestly.

References

Hanauer, D. A., Zheng, K., Singer, D. C., Gebremariam, A., & Davis, M. M. (2014). Public awareness, perception, and use of online physician rating sites. JAMA, 311(7), 734-735. https://doi.org/10.1001/jama.2013.283194

Jha, A. K., Orav, E. J., Zheng, J., & Epstein, A. M. (2008). Patients' perception of hospital care in the United States. New England Journal of Medicine, 359(18), 1921-1931. https://doi.org/10.1056/NEJMsa0804116

Ranard, B. L., Werner, R. M., Antanavicius, T., Schwartz, H. A., Smith, R. J., Meisel, Z. F., Asch, D. A., Ungar, L. H., & Merchant, R. M. (2016). Yelp reviews of hospital care can supplement and inform traditional surveys of the patient experience of care. Health Affairs, 35(4), 697-705. https://doi.org/10.1377/hlthaff.2015.1030