How much should cost a medical consultation? A marketing analysis from the viewpoint of health sector in Brazil

Abstract

The health sector has undergone profound changes regarding their business model. Today there are strong pressures for lower prices, which resulted from an increasingly competitive market that seeks to optimize resources. The service provided by a medical professional has undergone major transformations, supported in the past by social, ethical values, quality of care, humanization and optimization of labor, and quality of life, and are recently turned into a mercantilist model focused on the production scale, mass care, and profit. This article discusses about the variables that influence the pricing of medical services and the various issues involved in quality and perceived value of these services by the customer. This knowledge is extremely useful to help medical professionals in formatting price in its different services. © W. S. Maney & Son Ltd 2014.