Maternal Marketing Instinct.

BY TARGETING PREGNANT WOMEN, HOSPITALS HOPE TO WIN LIFELONG CUSTOMERS

WHEN Dayna Davis realized she was pregnant this year, she didn't know where she was going to deliver the baby. After all, it had been 13 years since she gave birth, and that was in San Jose.

So she decided to check out the Tender Beginnings prenatal care and education program at Methodist Hospital of Southern California in Arcadia, which just last year completed an addition to its maternity ward featuring 25 plush recovery rooms.

It didn't take long for the expectant mother to decide she had found the right place.

"It's awesome. It's just so new and it's not run down or anything," said the 38-year-old Davis, who has a Caesarian section scheduled for Dec. 1 and is now taking breast-feeding classes. "You walk in and everybody makes you feel like you are part of a family."

Bingo.

Hospitals throughout Los Angeles, forced to become much more savvy to survive in the brutal managed care environment, have realized that women are the primary health care decision-makers for their families. And if a hospital can succeed in providing a young woman with a positive child-bearing experience, that hospital stands a good chance of snagging her and her entire family as long-term customers, possibly for life.

Realizing that, local hospitals are aggressively expanding their maternity and pre-natal care programs.

Just as Methodist (an affiliate of Southern California Healthcare Systems) has its Tender Beginnings, Tenet Healthcare Corp. is expanding its Growing Expectations prenatal care programs across the region. Likewise, Catholic Healthcare West just expanded its Babies First program to Northridge Hospital Medical Center. Others, including Methodist, are spending big bucks to build fancy maternity wards to complement existing prenatal programs.

Jim Lott, executive vice president of the Healthcare Association of Southern California, said hospitals' increasing focus on would-be mothers is directly related to the penetration of managed care in the marketplace.

Almost three quarters of commercially insured residents of L.A. County are now enrolled in health maintenance organizations, while most of the rest are in preferred provider groups, leaving only a small fraction in traditional indemnity plans, he said.

"In the old paradigm, you could take your insurance and go anywhere. In most managed care models, the patient must choose a physicians' group, which will be associated with one or several hospitals. What the hospital wants is to have the patient ask for them," Lott said.

And the family member that hospitals especially want to win over is the wife and mother.

"Women make 85 percent of the non-emergency decisions in the agency medical decisions family - for the children and the spouse," Lott said. "The husband doesn't care which doctor he goes to. If the woman had a pleasant experience surrounding birth, she would be predisposed to use the hospital for other care."

High-tech accommodations

Just this year, Citrus Valley Health Partners opened its new Family Birth & Newborn Center at its Queen of the Valley Campus in West Covina at a cost of $30 million.

The hospital's marketing materials highlight how "generously sized rooms are decorated in natural tones and soothing colors to promote a warm, relaxing atmosphere," not to mention the state-of-the-art technology.

Irene Bourdon, Citrus Valley's vice president of market planning, said the hospital is proud to have such a facility for expectant mothers in the San Gabriel Valley. She acknowledged it plays a strong role in the hospital's overall marketing.

"We felt very strongly that because often times it's the first hospital experience that a family will have, it has to be a special experience. No one plans on getting a heart attack or cancer, but it tends to be one of the services that most families plan on," she said.

"If the family had a good experience the first time, then they would use our hospital for other services. It tends to be the woman in the household who makes these types of decisions."

The new center was enough to convince Shonda Tombrello to give birth there on Nov.21 to her fourth child, a 5-pound, 12-ounce baby girl.

"It's a very beautiful center. The rooms are very big and very private," said the 35-year-old West Covina resident. "They had all my needs met in one facility."

Tenet doesn't have a brand new $30 million maternity ward, but its Queen of Angels-Hollywood Presbyterian Medical Center is reaching out to its largely immigrant East Hollywood community to ensure that expectant mothers have prenatal services and are aware of the hospital's maternity program.

As part of its "grassroots marketing effort," the hospital is setting up its Growing Expectations booth at community fairs, church events and other venues that allow it direct contact with women considering having children or who are already pregnant, said Barbara Chavez, program coordinator.

The program offers free pregnancy tests, and will arrange free transportation to the program's offices, located in a converted childcare center on the hospital's grounds.

There, prospective patients go through an information program, learning about physician referrals and prenatal classes. Later, they take a tour of the hospital's maternity ward. The program, which only got up to full speed in April, is already attracting 120 women each week for the informational programs and tours, Chavez said.

"There are a lot of patients that are new to the area and don't know what services are available," she said "We make that bond and say, 'This is what is available here.' Ultimately, the patient decides where she wants to go."

Easy-payment plans

The hospital also does what it can to help patients pay for childbirth. Those without insurance are offered reduced cost plans and are directed to eligibility workers to determine if they qualify for Medi-Cal or the state's Healthy Families Program.

"Maternity is not a huge profit-maker, but it's the basis of a hospital," said Sharon Ray, Tenet's regional director of business development.

Northridge Hospital Medical Center opened its Babies First program this year at its Sherman Way and Roscoe Boulevard campuses. The program got its start only a year ago as part of an effort to attract patients to the newly opened maternity ward at Robert F. Kennedy Medical Center, a Catholic Healthcare West hospital in Hawthorne.

The program is being credited with helping RFK exceed its initial projections. The unit delivered 40 babies within eight days of its September opening.

Lori Solomon, Northridge Hospital's director of marketing, maintained that the hospital did not start its program solely to attract patients for its maternity ward, noting the hospital is a nonprofit and that it's helping more women to get critical prenatal care.

"There are babies that are born to mothers who are not taking care of themselves. We want to take care of the beginning of the pregnancy through the baby's first breath," she said.

Even so, Solomon acknowledged, the program allows the hospital "the ability to tout all the different amenities offered" at its maternity wards.

"You are able to discuss that each suite has a private bathroom," she said.