| Course | HA 630 Marketing and Strategic Growth in Healthcare |
|---|---|
| Unit | Unit 5 |
| Paper type | Marketing mix and referral plan |
| Length | About 840 words, 6 pages |
| Format | APA 7 student paper |
| School | Herzing University |
| Program | MS in Healthcare Administration |
| Updated | October 2026 |
Free sample paper for HA 630 Unit 5
Nineteen Days to Ten, $936 Explained Before the First Session, and a Liaison at the Regional Center: A Marketing Mix and Referral Plan for Cardiac Rehabilitation
Student Name
Health Care Administration, Herzing University
HA 630: Marketing and Strategic Growth in Healthcare
Instructor Name
February 12, 2026
Nineteen Days to Ten, $936 Explained Before the First Session, and a Liaison at the Regional Center: A Marketing Mix and Referral Plan for Cardiac Rehabilitation
The Decisions This Plan Makes
Units 3 and 4 chose two growth segments, residents whose surgery or procedure happened at the regional center, and residents of the outer counties, and found the program behind its main competitor on time to first session and hours. This plan sets the price, access, channel and referral decisions for the first year, with money and a measure attached to each. The year-one goal is 50 additional new patients, toward the three-year gap of 104 identified in Unit 2.
Price: What the Patient Will Actually Owe
Price is the least discussed and most damaging barrier in this service. Under traditional Medicare, a patient without supplemental coverage owes 20% of the allowed amount for every session. At the program's current Medicare allowed amount of about $130 a session, that is $26 a session, or $936 for a full course of 36 sessions. Commercial and Medicare Advantage members often owe a specialist-level copay of $30 to $50 a session. Patients rarely learn this until the first bill arrives. Evidence from one health system shows that each $10 increase in copay was linked to about 1.5 fewer sessions attended (Farah et al., 2019).
Decisions. First, every referred patient receives a personal cost estimate from a financial counselor before the first session, using the hospital's price estimator and the patient's coverage, so that cost is discussed rather than discovered. Second, patients who qualify under the hospital's written financial assistance policy receive the discount the policy provides; cost sharing is not waived routinely or advertised as waived, because routine waivers for referral-generating patients raise the fraud and abuse concerns studied in the law course. Third, the program director will ask the two largest Medicare Advantage plans to reclassify cardiac rehabilitation from a specialist copay to a lower therapy copay, using their own readmission data. Fourth, the hospital's posted self-pay rate for a session will be listed plainly on the program's web page.
Access: The Strongest Lever the Program Controls
Targets for the year, each with its current value:
| Access measure | Current | Target by month 6 | Target by month 12 |
|---|---|---|---|
| Days from referral to first session (median) | 19 | 14 | 10 |
| Calls to schedule within two business days of referral | 58% | 85% | 95% |
| Third next available intake appointment | 8 days | 5 days | 4 days |
| Session times offered | Three weekday mornings and early afternoons | Add 6:30 a.m. block | Add evening block, 4:30 to 6:30 p.m. |
| Online intake form for referred patients | None | Live | Live, with text reminders |
Why Access Comes First
Early enrollment is a quality measure in its own right, alongside referral before hospital discharge (Thomas et al., 2018), and delays lose patients: nationally, only about a quarter of participants started within 21 days of their event (Ritchey et al., 2020). The added early and evening blocks require a half-time exercise physiologist at about $38,000 a year, which is budgeted as an operating cost rather than a marketing cost but is listed here because the growth depends on it.
Channels, Spend and Measures
The channels are chosen for the segments, not for visibility. Total marketing spend in year one is $67,000.
| Channel | Spend | Reach assumption | Judged on |
|---|---|---|---|
| Referral liaison, half-time registered nurse based two days a week at the regional center | $48,000 | About 30 area residents discharged each month after surgery or complex stenting | Referrals from the regional center per month; target 15 |
| Automatic referral order in our electronic record, with a bedside visit by program staff | $6,000 | All eligible patients discharged from this hospital, about 34 a month | Share of eligible discharges referred, target 90%, and enrolled, target 55% |
| Primary care outreach: visits, referral pads, a one-page guide | $4,000 plus liaison time | 18 practices, about 46 clinicians in counties B to E | Referrals from primary care per quarter |
| Search, maps and listings (detailed in Unit 6) | $9,000 | Families searching after discharge | Calls and intake forms from search |
The Referral Plan
Referral is where most of the growth must come from. In a prospective study, automatic referral combined with a bedside conversation produced 85.8% referral and 73.5% enrollment, compared with 32.2% and 29.0% under usual care (Grace et al., 2011). The plan applies that approach to both referral sources.
Inside the hospital. The five cardiologists have agreed to an order set that refers every eligible patient automatically unless the physician opts out with a reason. A program staff member visits each referred patient before discharge to explain the program, book the intake appointment and introduce the financial counselor.
At the regional center. The practices to reach are the cardiothoracic surgery group (four surgeons), the structural heart team, and the interventional cardiology group, together with the discharge planners on the cardiac surgery unit. The liaison visits on the center's two main surgical discharge days each week, identifies patients from the five counties with the discharge planners, and meets them before they leave. The program director and medical director meet the surgery group quarterly to review their patients' results.
Primary care. The liaison visits each of the 18 practices once a quarter, bringing a list of their patients who completed the program, and leaves a one-page guide explaining eligibility and how to refer patients who were never referred after their event.
What the referring physician receives. Confirmation of enrollment within two business days; a first-session report with the patient's baseline exercise capacity, blood pressure response and medication list; a same-day message if the patient reports symptoms or misses two sessions in a row; and a final summary with change in exercise capacity, depression screening results and risk factor status. These reports are the program's most effective promotion to physicians and cost nothing but staff discipline. A template in the electronic record will generate each report from the session data, and the program director will audit ten reports a month for timeliness and completeness during the first year.
Expected Result
The plan's year-one target of 50 additional patients is built from its parts: about 25 from the regional center liaison, 18 from automatic referral in the hospital, 4 from primary care and 3 from search. Unit 8 converts these into contribution and tests a downside case.
References
Farah, M., Abdallah, M., Szalai, H., Berry, R., Lagu, T., Lindenauer, P. K., & Pack, Q. R. (2019). Association between patient cost sharing and cardiac rehabilitation adherence. Mayo Clinic Proceedings, 94(12), 2390-2398. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.mayocp.2019.07.018
Grace, S. L., Russell, K. L., Reid, R. D., Oh, P., Anand, S., Rush, J., Williamson, K., Gupta, M., Alter, D. A., & Stewart, D. E. (2011). Effect of cardiac rehabilitation referral strategies on utilization rates: A prospective, controlled study. Archives of Internal Medicine, 171(3), 235-241. https://doi.org/10.1001/archinternmed.2010.501
Ritchey, M. D., Maresh, S., McNeely, J., Shaffer, T., Jackson, S. L., Keteyian, S. J., Brawner, C. A., Whooley, M. A., Chang, T., Stolp, H., Schieb, L., & Wright, J. (2020). Tracking cardiac rehabilitation participation and completion among Medicare beneficiaries to inform the efforts of a national initiative. Circulation: Cardiovascular Quality and Outcomes, 13(1), Article e005902. https://doi.org/10.1161/CIRCOUTCOMES.119.005902
Thomas, R. J., Balady, G., Banka, G., Beckie, T. M., Chiu, J., Gokak, S., Ho, P. M., Keteyian, S. J., King, M., Lui, K., Pack, Q., Sanderson, B. K., & Wang, T. Y. (2018). 2018 ACC/AHA clinical performance and quality measures for cardiac rehabilitation: A report of the American College of Cardiology/American Heart Association Task Force on Performance Measures. Circulation: Cardiovascular Quality and Outcomes, 11(4), Article e000037. https://doi.org/10.1161/HCQ.0000000000000037
What the HA 630 Unit 5 instructions ask for
In Unit 5 you write a marketing mix and referral plan for one clinical service. You will state the decisions the plan makes, then address price, access, channels with spending and measures, the referral process and the expected result. Students often ask how the classic four Ps fit health care. Price means what the patient actually owes after coverage, not the list charge. Place becomes access: wait times, session hours and how easily a referred patient can start. Promotion splits into channels aimed at referrers and at patients. Give every action a cost and a measure. Build the expected result from its parts so readers can see which channel carries the plan.
Inside the HA 630 Unit 5 example
The plan opens with the year-one goal and how it fits the three-year gap. The price section works out the coinsurance per session and over a full course, then commits to a cost conversation and financial assistance screening before enrollment. An access table lists five measures with current values and six- and twelve-month targets. The access rationale cites early enrollment as a quality measure and budgets a half-time exercise physiologist. A channel table gives spend, reach and the measure for the liaison, automatic referral, primary care outreach and search. The referral section describes the order set agreed with the five cardiologists and the liaison's routine at the regional center. The expected result adds 25, 18, 4 and 3 patients.
Where the points sit in the HA 630 Unit 5 rubric
Herzing's rubric for a marketing mix plan usually covers the decisions, price, access or place, channels, the referral process and expected results. Linking every action to a cost and a measure carries the heaviest weight, because a plan without both cannot be funded or judged. Price points reward the patient's real out-of-pocket amount. Access criteria look for wait times and hours with current values and targets. Channel credit goes to spending aimed at the chosen segments rather than broad visibility. Referral points reward an evidence-based process, such as automatic referral with a bedside conversation. Expected results should be built from parts. Grace's automatic referral trial and Thomas's performance measures support the plan.
Common HA 630 Unit 5 mistakes, and how to avoid them
Mix plans in HA 630 Unit 5 tend to falter when price is treated as the hospital's charge rather than what the patient pays. Another frequent problem is promotion spending with no measure attached. Students often skip access, though waits and hours decide whether referred patients start. Channels are chosen for visibility rather than for the target segments. Referral is described as a hope rather than a process with owners. The expected result is a single number with no build. Current values are missing, so targets mean little. Staffing costs for new hours are left out. Finally, give each action a dollar figure and a way to judge it, because graders favor a plan that a program director could fund and then track month by month.
Get a HA 630 Unit 5 example written to your instructions
Send the Unit 5 instructions and the rubric from your HA 630 classroom, plus the service line, the target segment and any budget your section set. We write a custom example with price and access decisions, a referral program naming practices and cadence, and channels carrying spend and measures, returned in 24 to 48 hours. The first custom sample is free.
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HA 630 Unit 5 questions, answered
How does price work when insurance pays?
It works through several numbers at once. Network participation determines whether a patient can come to you affordably, the negotiated rate determines what the organization collects, and the out of pocket amount determines what the patient experiences as price. Shoppable service estimates and self-pay rates are visible to the public, so a plan should say what is posted and how estimates are given.
Should the plan include physician outreach as marketing?
In most specialty and diagnostic lines it is the largest part of the work. Referring practices supply volume in bulk, decide quickly, and stop referring for operational reasons such as slow reports or difficulty booking. Treat them as an audience with their own offer, their own contact rhythm and their own retention measures, and say who inside the organization owns the relationship.
How much detail does a channel plan need?
Enough that someone could approve or refuse it. Name the channel, the audience it reaches, the period it runs, what it costs, what creative direction it carries and which measure will judge it. Ranges are acceptable where a figure is genuinely uncertain, provided the assumption behind the range is stated. Unpriced channels are the fastest way to lose a feasibility criterion.
Where can I find a free HA 630 Unit 5 sample paper?
The full HA 630 Unit 5 marketing mix and referral plan is free on this page, cardiac rehabilitation price, access, channels and referral with a cost and measure for each. Plans for other clinical programs can be written to order.
How can hospitals increase cardiac rehab referrals?
Automatic referral orders at discharge combined with a bedside visit from program staff raise referral and enrollment sharply, and a liaison can capture patients treated elsewhere. This sample budgets both.