There are a variety of healthcare organizations beyond the “big three” of hospitals, nursing homes, and medical practices. MCH Strategic Data compiles specialized databases of more than a dozen other health services. By understanding these organizations, you can find more sales opportunities and improve the return on your marketing efforts.

Hospitals often also have departments that provide these same functions. If you sell a specialized medical product or service, you’ll get the maximum coverage by targeting the stand-alone clinics in addition to the hospital departments.

One group of these institutions can be thought of as specialized medical clinics. They typically feature the services of physicians, operate during normal business hours, and are often owned by the physicians.

Ambulatory Surgery Centers provide specialized outpatient surgical procedures. There are more than dozen specialties including plastic surgery, ophthalmology (think “Lasik”), and gynecology. Since these clinics focus on high-profit services, they can be excellent targets for general business-to-business offers in addition to specialized medical offers. General offers should be directed to the center’s administrator and medical promotions should go to the medical director.

Community Health Centers are clinics that are supported by federal funding to provide healthcare in under-served areas. They typically provide low-cost general health services for a high volume of patients. The stimulus funding passed in 2009 provided substantial additional funding for Community Health Centers.

Pain Care Facilities are highly specialized clinics that focus on the treatment of severe and chronic pain conditions.

Urgent Care Centers, often called walk-in clinics, are typically small medical practices that provide evening and weekend medical treatment for minor injuries and illnesses. The centers may have a physician on staff or, in many instances, may have services provided by nurse practitioners or physician assistants under the guidance of a physician.

Some provide specialized care that can include residential services.

Alcohol and Drug Abuse Facilities provide substance abuse treatment. The treatment may include inpatient or outpatient services. MCH can help you distinguish between the facilities that focus on alcohol or drugs.

Cancer Centers and Services are institutions that specialize in oncology, and the services may include inpatient care.

Others provide specialized health services related to nursing or technical disciplines.

Diagnostic Imaging Centers specialize in providing x-rays, ultrasound scanning, MRI, and many other imaging services. Because they typically serve a high volume of patients, these organizations are particularly good targets for general offers and well as the specialized equipment that they use.

Home Health Services provide in-home nursing care to patients under the direction of the patient’s physician. This is a $64 billion industry that serves more than 8 million people annually. Most of these services have a staff of 10 – 100 employees. There are a wide variety of treatment specialties that can be selected from the MCH database.

Hospice Services are focused on the needs of patients in the end-stages of terminal illnesses. Some hospice services are inpatient facilities, but the trend has been for much hospice care to occur in the home with services provided by home health services.

Renal Dialysis Clinics provide dialysis care to patients whose kidneys do not function sufficiently. The MCH database allows you to target these institutions based on the services they provide and number of dialysis stations.