HEALTH ECOSYSTEM - STUDY OF PATIENT LOYALTY STRATEGIES DURING PANDEMIC COVID-19

Abstract

The current pandemic context is afflicting the entire community worldwide in a differentiated way, it has challenged all sectors and, in particular, the health sector, inducing that the sector is one of the most respected phenomena of the contextual environment, which is facing strong challenges caused by it.
All these changes incited by the Covid-19 pandemic brought profound transformations to business structures. Marketing has become a more centralized, responsible and internally estimated area, facilitating trust within institutions, between them and customers.
Like the other sectors of activity, marketing has become essential, and health services begin to become concerned about aspects related to it, which in fend the confidence, satisfaction, loyalty and permanence of their patients in consultations, demonstrating quality and safety.
In the current situation, and bearing in mind the fortify technological evolution of the sector, to respond to the needs of patients and preserve their confidence, the aim of this study is to expose strategies that allow public health institutions to preserve and retain their patients during and after the Covid-19 pandemic, maintaining their degree of satisfaction and loyalty to the sector, as it was in the prepandemic.
Based on a study conducted pre-pandemic Covid-19 to the health sector, in an interior region of Portugal, it was understood that there is trust and commitment of patients with health services, consider that there is quality in the services provided, are faithful to the service, intending to maintain a lasting relationship.
The present study aims to expose a set of strategies based on digital media, to maintain the degree of loyalty of patients to the health institution in the current scenario. In the future, the research should be followed to investigate and analyze the feedback of the loyalty strategies expressed for the sector.
It is worth noting its contribution to public and private health units, by allowing the apprehend and application of the concepts, integrating them and crossing them with other realities, namely with regard to the application of digital marketing techniques in the conquest of trust and loyalty of patients, in the context of pandemic and future.