Family Medicine has always been regarded as an interdisciplinary specialty, but lately, in most Eastern-European countries, such as Romania, it has been supported by many laws and regulations. The outcome of this prolific background has brought both advantages and disadvantages. Some advantages relate to a sustainable structure, and, at the same time, Family Medicine has been recognized as being the gate-keeper in almost any health care system. Further, due to the privatization of most family practice offices, in Romania, appeared a modern organizational approach, in the shape of a consortium of family physician practices. Some family physicians consider providing their services in a private office as a benefit, but for others the freedom and autonomy to become responsible of their own practice is considered to be a drawback because, apart from the clinical activity, many family physicians have to deal with managerial and marketing issues. In Romania, a consortium of family practice offices has to overcome a very competitive environment and some Marketing specific trends. The aim of this paper is to investigate the usefulness of marketing strategies in the Romanian family physician practice.
Social Marketing offers new insight into the design of health care programs that focus on the comprehensive vision of understanding the target audience. As there have been several confusions between the Health Care Social Marketing and education or preventive health care programs, the characteristics refer to the social good and behavior change on voluntary grounds. This paper aimed to elaborate some guidelines for Health Care Social Marketing campaigns to increase the chances of success and trigger the expected behavioral change in the target audience. To ensure the successful implementation of a Social Marketing campaign in health care, a plan that describes the necessary steps to respond in terms of efficiency and effectiveness to the public health campaign outcomes needs to be elaborated. The proposed model has three levels of intervention, as found in the scientific literature: Diagnosis of social problems, Benefits, and social change, and Social Marketing Mix.
