Hospitals Learn the Hard Sell

The U.S. medical establishment may still draw its primary inspiration from the Hippocratic oath, but many hospitals are taking a few lessons from Madison Avenue. Items:

— Mount Sinai Medical Center in Miami Beach is selling its own brand of chicken soup, complete with the hospital name on the label. Reason: to promote its reputation as a warm and soothing place.

— SwedishAmerican Hospital in Rockford, Ill., is offering a clever gimmick to lure obstetrics customers: Dial-A-Dad, a service in which beepers are given to expectant fathers so they can be paged within a 30-mile radius when mothers go into labor.

— “Kidney Stones? Who Ya Gotta Call . . . Stonebusters!” With that jarring punch line, Saint Joseph Medical Center in Burbank, Calif., is touting its newly acquired lithotripter, a device that disintegrates kidney stones with shock waves.

What is all this hype about healing? Dr. Ben Casey, the stuffy TV neurosurgeon of yesteryear, would surely be stunned. While many doctors still keep a low advertising profile, the rest of the health-care industry has suddenly gone for the hard sell. To fill a growing number of empty beds and to stand out amid increased competition, hospitals and clinics have started embracing modern marketing techniques. Result: a wave of come-ons for everything from cancer treatment to fat removal.

The promos blare from radio, TV, newspapers, billboards and even subway placards. Ad spending by hospitals alone has surged from less than $50 million in 1983 to an estimated $500 million in 1986. The new imperative to attract customers may be unsettling, but it is making the health-care industry far more creative in letting consumers know what modern medicine can do for them. “Hospitals are struggling to learn all the competitive skills that businesses have known and applied for a long time,” says Linda Bogue, an administrator at San Francisco’s Mount Zion Hospital and Medical Center.

Hospitals hope their new marketing savvy will help cure the growing epidemic of empty beds. The national occupancy rate was only 63.7% during the first nine months of 1986, down from a traditional level of about 80%. One reason is the advance of medical technology, which has increased the number of procedures that can be performed on an outpatient basis. Another spur to health-care competition has been the dramatic efforts by insurance companies, employers and Government health-care programs, notably Medicare, to rein in runaway medical costs by encouraging shorter hospital stays. The Government, for example, now generally reimburses hospitals based on a flat rate for a given illness, rather than allowing the hospital to set the price.

To keep their buildings full, hospitals aim to shed their images as sprawling, complicated, emergency-oriented places. One method is slicker packaging. Hospitals have reorganized their services into neatly thematic departments devoted to problems ranging from impotence to sports injuries. In Philadelphia, where medical competition has grown intense, Thomas Jefferson University Hospital advertises special clinics to handle childbirth, eating disorders, sleeping problems, Alzheimer’s disease and hearing loss. A print ad for Jefferson’s bulimia program shows an attractive female model who says, “Eating ruled my life. I called Jefferson.” The ad even provides a catchy toll-free number: 1-800-JEFF-NOW.

Such clinics carry an image of special competence, which is important now that consumers have become more discriminating and take-charge in their attitude toward medicine. Says Jan Michael Lok, publisher of Healthcare Marketing Report: “Some years ago, patients went to the hospital the doctor said they should go to. But now consumers know they have choices.”

When patients shop around, health-care providers want their names to come readily to mind. San Francisco’s Mount Zion mails a quarterly newsletter called HealthWorks for Women to 30,000 local households. Magee-Womens Hospital in Pittsburgh has purchased a maternity-clothing store as another way of assisting pregnant women. United Hospital in St. Paul and Metropolitan Medical Center in Minneapolis helped create Nutritious Cuisine, a line of frozen dinners for the elderly. Other high-visibility programs include toll- free crisis lines and roving mammography vans.

The boom in medical marketing has produced a strong new field for the advertising industry, in which many other categories have stagnated. Health- care pitches on local television jumped 40% during the first half of last year, to $55.1 million, compared with an overall local-TV ad increase of 14%. Agencies devoted solely to health-care accounts have seen their business double and triple over the past few years and have started attracting lucrative takeover offers from the mega-agencies.

At least a few medical-promotion ideas suggested by overzealous ad agencies have been less than tasteful. One print ad proposed for St. Mary’s Hospital Regional Laser Center in Milwaukee read: “Mikhail Gorbachev knows how lasers can be used to zap enemy missiles. But he might be surprised to learn how they can also be used to zap away problem birthmarks, like the reddish-purple one on his forehead.” The hospital turned down the ad before it ran.

A more serious concern among doctors is that health-care providers will hurry into trendy services without acquiring real expertise. “I worry that in their entrepreneurial zeal they are going into things that they don’t do well,” says Physician Sidney Wolfe, director of the Naderite Public Citizen Health Research Group. Another complaint is that hospitals and clinics are putting too much emphasis on simple, promotable services, especially those aimed at the wealthy. Says Physician Ron Anderson, president of Parkland Memorial Hospital in Dallas: “Many hospitals are becoming boutiques, delivering only the profitable services. It bothers me.”

Medical advertising offers many rewards for consumers. It gives patients a growing new source of information about health-care options. Promotion and competition also force doctors and hospitals to hold prices down. But in responding to medical advertising — as to any form of promotion — consumers are well advised to be a bit skeptical and get all the facts before making a decision.