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Duke University Medical Center
VOLUME 24, NUMBER 19
MAY 13,1977
DURHAM, NORTH CAROLINA
Marketing Helps Hospital Meet Challenges
"Marketing the Hospittd" will be
the topic of discussion today and
Saturday as more than 200 hospital
administrators and health care
professionals from across the United
States gather at the medical center for
the 13th annual National Forum on
Hospital and Health Affairs.
The meeting is being sponsored
by the Department of Health
Administration.
Dr. Boi Jon Jaeger, chairman of the
department, explained the purpose
of the meeting;
"Up until the last few years, people
in the health field never spoke of
marketing, perhaps because
hospitals were held in such relative
high esteem by the public, and
'marketing' was considered too
commercial," he said.
Meeting Challenges
"But events of the past decade —
rapidly rising costs, increasing
regulation, consumer
disenchantment and others — have
seriously ,eroded the once
unchallenged purpose and
performance of hospitals," Jaeger
said.
"This forum is simply the
recognition that there is a body of
knowledge and skills that can help
the health service industry meet
these challenges and do a better job."
Jaeger said such practice as
painting hospital rooms cheery
colors instead of the once traditional
gray, serving coffee early in the
mornings and putting televisions in
patient rooms are examples of
marketing practices designed to
make a patient's stay in the hospital
more pleasant.
"The fact is, hospitals have been
involved in marketing for many
years," he said, "They just haven't
been doing it very well."
Speakers and Topics
The Friday morning session, to be
presided over by Mary M. Blanks,
assistant professor of health
administration, will include the
following talks:
"Marketing in Perspective" by Dr.
John U. Farley, professor of business at
Columbia University; "Marketing
Hospitals to the Public" by Robert S.
Ewing, executive director of Moore
Memorial Hospital Foundation in
Pinehurst, N.C.; and "Increasing Patient
Satisfaction" by Wade Mountz,
president of Norton Children's Hospital,
Inc., of Louisville.
S. Douglas Smith, associate
administrative director of Duke Hospital,
is to preside at the afternoon s^sion. The
program will include:
"Courting the Physician" by Dr.
Thomas F. Frist, president and chief
operating officer of the Hospital
Corporation of America in Nashville;
"Influencing the Employee
Relationship" by L. Stanton Tuttle,
senior vice president at Brookwood
Medical Center, Inc., in Birmingham;
and "The Importance of the Market" by
E>r. Paul M. EUwood Jr., president of
InterStudy in Excelsior, Mich.
The Satiuday moming session will be
presided over by Dr. Barbara P. McCool,
associate professor of hea.lth
administration. Topics will include:
"Improving Buyer Acceptance" by
Victor M. Zink, director of employee
benefits and services of General Motors
Corp., Detroit; "Marketing the Hospital
to Government Agencies" by William T.
Robinson, vice president of the
American Hospital Association in
Chicago; and "Marketing — An
Emerging Management Challenge" by
Bernard J. Lachner, president of
Evanston (111.) Hospital.
All sessions are being held in the
Hospital Amphitheater.
Hungarians Learn of Metabolism Studies
A medical center researcher who
has developed optical techniques for
studying metabolism in living tissue
and two of his colleagues are in
Hungary to exchange information
with scientists in the European
nation.
Drs. Frans Jobsis, professor of
physiology, Myron Rosenthal,
assistant professor of physiology,
and T.R. Snow, a resear^ associate
in medicine, will spend three weeks
in Budapest in Semmelweiss
Medical University as guests of Dr.
Arisztid Kovach.
Their visit is part of a cultural
exchange program sponsored by the
United States Department of State,
the National Science Foundation and
the Hungarian govenunent.
In explaining the work he has been
doing in this country for the past 20
years, in which the Hungarians have
expressed interest recently, Jobsis
said that most studies of metabolism
involve destroying tissue and then
analysing it in test tubes to
determine biochemical changes.
Analysis without Destruction
"What we are trying to do is to
obtain information by optical
techniques on reactioits t^ng place
in intact tissue without destroying
it," Jobsis said.
"The interesting thing we have
found is that the behavior of some
key enzyme systems in intact tissues
is different from those studied in the
test tube."
Understanding these differences is
obviously important to scientists
trying to understand how
biomedical reactions maintain life
processes, he said.
InAllCelb
Cytochrome is one of the enzymes
Jobsis and his group are studying.
He said cytochrome, which is found
in just about all cells in the body,
picks up oxygen molecules from
hemoglobin in the blood and allows
it to 1m used to produce the energy
needed for all tissue functions.
(Continued on page 4)
HAPPY OCCASION—At left, the faces of graduating nursing students (left to right)
Linda Joy Bowden, Hannah Harris and Wendy Bergfeidt reflect the emotions of
commencement weekend as they leave the chapel after the School of Nursing's
Recognition Service. Above, Dr. Jay M. Arena (right), professor of pediatrics, helps
Perry Como with his doctoral hood as President Terry Sanford awards him an
honorary degree. Doctor of Humane Letters. Como will be back again for the
Children's Classic, Duke's annual celebrity golf tournament. May 29-30. (Photos by
Jim Wallace)