| Brent Hanson - LasikFraud.com 2005-04-14, 8:42 am |
| Hospitals have relied on publicity campaigns for decades, rolling out a mix
of ads in newspapers, on radio and on television to help drum up business
and differentiate themselves from their competitors.
Lately, however, marketing departments at top-flight academic medical
centers have become increasingly creative in their pitches to patients,
drawing on the kinds of subtle, sophisticated techniques that some critics
say are more often associated with pharmaceutical firms and car salesmen
than healthcare providers.
In the first study of its kind, a report in the March 28 issue of the
Archives of Internal Medicine condemned this trend among the nation's most
prominent hospitals to borrow slick, Madison Avenue-style marketing methods
to publicize such high-margin services as fertility treatments, Botox and
Lasik surgery.
The study, which analyzed newspaper ads for 17 of the nation's best-known
academic medical centers, concluded that the marketing efforts appeared to
``place the interests of the medical center before the interests of the
patients'' by highlighting ``unproved'' or ``cosmetic'' procedures instead
of services that promote the general well-being of the community. What's
more, the academic medical centers-which included the Mayo Clinic,
Rochester, Minn.; Johns Hopkins Hospital, Baltimore; and the university of
California at Los Angeles Medical Center-traded on their reputations to
appeal to the emotions and trust of prospective patients, researchers said.
``When you see these kinds of ads from, say, a car company, that's one
thing,'' said Robin Larson, an internist who is the lead author of the study
and an instructor at Dartmouth Medical School, Hanover, N.H. ``You know
there's a financial gain when the car company's doing advertising. When we
think of healthcare, we like to think that the `patient-first' ethic is
what's important.''
She suggested that academic medical centers are ``creating the same sense of
need'' in the minds of the public as pharmaceutical companies, which have
come under harsh attack in recent years for their reliance on expensive
direct-to-consumer advertising.
Some academic medical center officials bristled at the suggestion that they
have used manipulative advertising campaigns to attract new patients for
profitable services.
Jim Blazar, chief marketing officer for the Cleveland Clinic, one of the
facilities studied by the researchers, said the institution has no intention
of changing the way it has advertised its services over the past
quarter-century. ``The purpose of our advertising is to provide information,
to motivate people to learn more,'' he said. ``I believe that when people
are more knowledgeable, they make better decisions.''
Elaine Freeman, vice president of corporate communications for Johns
Hopkins, which came under fire for advertising a series of free seminars on
uterine fibroids, said the hospital is ``very cautious about not making
inappropriate claims'' regarding treatment. Freeman said she disagreed with
many of the conclusions of the report but added, ``I think it never hurts to
raise sensitivity to the issues.''
A spokesman for Duke university Medical Center in Durham, N.C., another
institution cited in the study, said no one was available to comment. Elaine
Rubin, a spokeswoman for the Association of Academic Health Centers, a trade
group that represents about 100 institutions, declined to comment.
While acknowledging academic medical centers must generate revenue to stay
in business and serve the public, Larson said the kind of advertising she
discovered isn't the appropriate way to do it. ``They need to find other
creative ways of staying in business,'' she said.
These facilities, she said, should ``limit anything that is causing fear or
exaggerating benefits and work on providing messages that help the public
make good decisions.''
The study, which examined marketing efforts throughout 2002, found that most
of the academic medical centers relied on a list of headlines that
``exemplifies several commonly used marketing strategies,'' underscoring
attention-grabbing words and headlines such as ``at the forefront,''
``breakthrough,'' ``tomorrow's medicine today'' and ``world class.''
Bold headlines ``commonly mentioned symptoms or diseases or used strategies
that might appeal to patients' emotions or fears,'' the study found. The
University of Chicago Hospitals, for example, advertised an offer for a $25
heart screening under the headline, ``Early detection is key to surviving
heart disease.''
Consumers, the report added, are conditioned to regard ads from drug
companies and other mass-merchandising markets with a degree of suspicion
about motivation. ``It is reasonable to assume that consumers do not bring
the same skepticism to health-services ads from academic medical centers
that they do to other forms of advertising,'' according to the report, a
joint effort by Dartmouth and the Veterans Affairs Medical Center in White
River Junction, Vt., where Larson is a researcher. These institutions,
Larson said, risk ``eroding'' public trust by using these kinds of
advertising techniques.
In one attempt at high-tech marketing, the American Hospital Association
joined U.S. News & World Report in late 2003 to create an online directory
that offers information to consumers about specialized services, treatments
and URLs for about 6,000 hospitals (Nov. 17, 2003. 14). It was the AHA's
first consumer-oriented alliance.
The vast majority of U.S. healthcare facilities use some form of marketing
or advertising to attract patients, experts said. It's the only way to
differentiate their services or educate the public, said Susan Alcorn, a
longtime hospital marketing official and a spokeswoman for Geisinger Health
System, Danville, Pa.
``I don't think (the level of advertising) is surprising in the least,''
said Alcorn, who is also the president-elect of the Society for Healthcare
Strategy and Market Development, an affiliate of the AHA that represents
about 3,500 marketing and public relations officials across the country.
``Especially for academic medical centers, who have highly specialized
services, if people don't know about them they can't utilize them.''
www.modernhealthcare.com/article.cms?articleId=35532
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