NARAYANA HEALTH

Introduction

Narayana Health is a chain of multi-specialty hospital formed by Dr. Devi Shetty in

2001 at Bangalore,
India. Apart from Bangalore, the group has its presence in Kolkata, Ahmedabad,
Jaipur, Raipur,
Jamshedpur, Guwahati, Mumbai, Mysore, Dharwad, Kolar, Shimoga and Davangere in
addition to an
international subsidiary in the Cayman Islands.

Narayana Health offers specialty and tertiary care facilities covering a wide range
of specializations.
Innovative methods of services and scale of operations led to lowering of cost to
NH and hence provision
of cheaper services. Narayana Health is considered one of world’s best medical
service providers.

Here I will show how Narayana Health uses the 7 P’s of service marketing mix i.e.,
Product, Price, Place,
Promotion, People, Process and Physical evidence to manage the 4 I’s of services
which are Intangibility,
Inseparability, Inventory and Inconsistency.

4I’s of Narayana Hospital

The 4I’s of Narayana Hospital in Bangalore are listed below:

 Intangibility: Intangibility is used in marketing to describe the inability

to assess the value gained
from engaging in an activity using any tangible evidence. It is often used
to describe
services where there isn't a tangible product that the customer can
purchase, that can be seen,
tasted, or touched.
The intangible elements in Narayana include:
i. Treatment through medication
ii. Treatment through surgery
iii. Nursing
iv. Diagnostic
v. Tests
vi. Consulting
Unlike products, these services cannot be held, touched, or seen before the
purchase decision thus, they
should be made tangible to a certain extent. Hospitals “tangibilize the intangible”
to communicate service
nature and quality.

 Inseparability: Services are produced and consumed simultaneously.

Consumers cannot
and do not separate the deliverer of the service from the service itself.
Interaction
between consumer and the service provider varies based on whether consumer
must
be physically present to receive the service. A surgeon at Narayana cannot
be
separated from the patient nor can a nurse be separated from nursing the
patient in
order to provide the service. Hence most of the services we see at Narayana
or in fact
any hospital involves co-production with customers or patients. Treatment
of patients
cannot be mass produced.

 Inconsistency: Service quality is often inconsistent. This is because

service personnel
have different capabilities, which vary in performance from day to day.
Similarly in the
case of Narayana different doctors have different capabilities and so do
the other staff
 including nurses. Different patients suffer from different set of problems and
require
different treatment too. Hence doctors and other staff members cannot provide
consistently the same level and efficiency when it comes to their services.
They are
after all, humans. It cannot be 100% standardized.

 Inventory: No inventory can be maintained for services. Inventory carrying

costs are more
subjective and lead to idle production capacity. When the service is available
but there is no
demand, cost rises as, cost of paying the people and overhead remains constant
even though the
people are not required to provide services due to lack of demand.

Similarly in case of Narayana the services provided by doctors and nurses

cannot be stored.

These 4 characteristics of service marketing is dealt by the 7P’s of service

marketing.

7P’s of Service Marketing:

The 7P’s of service marketing and the way it manages the 4I’s are listed below:

 Product: The hospital provides test results in documents. This acts as a

tangible product hence
reducing the intangible component to some extent. Patient is provided with a
pouch containing a
digital thermometer, toothbrush and other commodities. Injections also act as
product, so does
the food provided. All these target the intangibility aspects of marketing.
Other than that, the
storage of these products act as inventory thereby targeting another aspect of
service marketing.
 Price: Pricing can be used to target the inventory characteristic of service
marketing. We know
that services cannot be stored. But why does the need for storage arises? Only
to be utilize the
excess later. However the pricing in Narayana Hospital is so low that there is
always some
requirement or the other, so there is hardly any excess service. For example 14
heart surgeons
conduct 25-30 cardiac surgeries a day which is phenomenal by any standards
since other hospitals
on an average conduct less than 10 cardiac surgeries a day.
 Place: Narayana Hospital at Bangalore is spread over 25 acres and houses a 900-
bed heart
hospital, a 1400-bed cancer hospital, a 500-bed orthopedic and trauma hospital,
a 300-bed eye
hospital, an organ transplant institute and departments in neurosurgery,
neurology, pediatrics,
nephrology, urology, gynecology and gastroenterology. This entire
infrastructure deals with
intangibility, helps in inventory, has certain infrastructure which separates
the service agent with
the patient thereby dealing with inseparability and to a certain extent deals
with inconsistency as
the infrastructure provided is the same for all.
 Promotion: Narayana conducts various activities like blood donation camps,
awareness programs
for numerous diseases etc., which act as indirect promotion. It also has a tie
up with Karnataka
government to provide affordable health care via insurance. This too act as a
great medium of
promotion. These activities targets the intangible components for example
having blood banks.
Apart from that this also involves certain inventory.
 People: People are trained in such a way that routine tasks are performed by
lower qualified
employees like nurses and other such staff. Multi-tasking and standardization
of routine
procedures has increased consistency thereby targeting the inconsistency
component of services.
Often times at Narayana certain nursing tasks are taught to family members in
order to reduce
the cost as well as time and utilization of nurses thereby targeting
inseparability. The uniform,
 documentation and paperwork which involves people can be considered to be
focusing on
intangible aspects.
 Process:
 Physical Evidence