WSJ.com - Study Criticizes Ads By Top U.S. Hospitals:
Many of the nation's top-ranked medical centers employ some of the same advertising techniques doctors often criticize drug companies for -- concealing risks and playing on fear, vanity and other emotions to attract patients, a study found.
The study of newspaper ads placed by 17 top-rated university medical centers highlights the conflict between serving public health and making money, the researchers said.
Some ads, especially those touting specific services, might create a sense of need in otherwise healthy patients and “seem to put the financial interests of the academic medical center ahead of the best interests of the patients,” they said.
The centers studied were on U.S. News & World Report's 2002 honor roll of the nation's best hospitals, including Johns Hopkins' medical center, Harvard-affiliated Massachusetts General Hospital, the University of Chicago Hospitals and Vanderbilt University's medical center. The study appears in Monday's Archives of Internal Medicine.“We do Botox!” one analyzed ad proclaims. Another depicts a spilled cup of coffee symbolizing a woman's heart attack -- potentially evoking fear in a tactic more commonly associated with pharmaceutical ads than respected hospitals, said lead author Robin Larson, a researcher at the Veterans Affairs Medical Center in White River Junction, Vt.
Of 122 ads designed to attract patients and published in newspapers in 2002, 21 promoted specific services, including Botox antiwrinkle injections and laser eye surgery. Only one of the 21 ads mentioned the risks. Sixty-two percent of the ads used an emotional appeal to attract patients. One third used slogans focusing on technology, fostering a misperception that high-tech medicine is always better, the researchers said.
“As a result, patients may be given false hopes and unrealistic expectations,” the researchers said.
Hospitals are caught in the middle between providing care to sick folk and making large enough profits in an increasingly cutthroat healthcare environment to pay for all those corporate salary bonuses. Ahh, American Capitalism.
