Pricing strategy and tactics in the new hospital marketplace

This article integrates and applies work in the general business literature to the design and execution of pricing decisions in hospitals. First, the emergence of pricing as an important function in hospitals is discussed. Second, four distinctly different strategies that can be employed by hospitals to price their offerings are described. Third, a variety of different pricing tactics, and their situational assets and liabilities, are reviewed. The article concludes with a series of recommendations for designing pricing strategies and tactics in the new health care marketplace.