Patients going to the Methodist Medical Center in Peoria, Ill., never worry about parking their cars. The hospital started offering valet parking a few months ago. The place also has a doorman. After he swings open the door, patients are handed over to an escort, who shepherds them to their destination.
"These things are going over really well," remarked Ellen Barron, the hospital's vice president for marketing and planning. "People appreciate the little things."
Hospitals and doctors, faced with competition at every turn, are resorting to the sort of marketing tactics more commonly found in the airline business or the quick-burger industry. With increasing frequency, they are advertising in newspapers and on television. According to figures from the Television Bureau of Advertising, for example, health-care professionals spent $41 million on TV spots last year, compared with just $3.7 million in 1977.
Some Concerns
To be sure, many doctors and consumers who feel that the saving of lives is a lot different from the selling of pudding, look with half-lidded eyes on the idea of health-care advertising. Marketing expenditures, moreover, might contribute to higher healthcare costs and needless utilization. A spokesman for the American Medical Association remarks, "Lots of physicians still associate advertising with quackery. Some doctors don't want to even list their names in the Yellow Pages."
But the concept is clearly gaining acceptance among nonprofit and profit-making institutions alike. Two different approaches are being tried," said William Flexner, head of Flexner & Associates, a health care consultant. "Some places are advertising that they care, which I don't think works because you have to experience caring. Others are advertising 'we have such-and-such service' prenatal care or ambulatory surgery, for instance. Some hospitals advertise an image. A popular one seems to be the high-tech image."
In addition, health-care dispensers are cooking up some unorthodox enticements. Some hospitals, including a number of the 89 facilities in the Humana Inc. chain, guarantee that they will inspect a patient within a prescribed time of arrival in the emergency room. Eastwood Hospital in Memphis gives refunds to patients of between $5 and $15 if various standards are not met, such as if the floor nurse does not answer a call signal within a minute, the linens are not changed daily or a meal is not served piping hot. In the program's first year, infractions resulted in the hospital's trimming a total of $140 from patients' bills.
When Southwood Community Hospital in Norfolk, Mass., was converted to a general hospital from a cancer treatment center recently, the community was saturated with direct mail brochures that enclosed coupons good for a free medical encyclopedia. To get the volume, a patient had to show up at the hospital's walk-in clinic, but did not have to be treated. And an Albuquerque, N.M., obstetrician-gynecologist advertised his practice using a hot-air balloon with a stork painted on it.
One of the more memorable marketing gimmicks was used by Sunrise Hospital in Las Vegas. A number of years ago, the hospital staged a lottery that was open only to patients who checked in on the weekend, a typically slack time at hospitals. The grand prize was a cruise for two. Utilization soared by 60 percent in 18 months.
"Hospitals and doctors have suddenly found themselves in a competitive situation which didn't exist 10 years ago," says Dan Beckham, head of Healthtmarket Inc., a health-care consultant.
Mr. Beckham guesses that perhaps 50 percent to 60 percent of the nation's hospitals now employ a marketing professional, compared with perhaps 5 percent to 10 percent just three years ago.
Until recently, medical societies and hospital associations frowned on or actually barred their members from soliciting patients. It was as recently as 1977 that the American Hospital Association published its first guidelines for hospital advertising. The Federal Trade Commission ruled in 1980 that the American Medical Association could not bar its members from advertising, and the A.M.A. has revamped its code of ethics to allow advertising in a truthful manner.
Since then, health-care professionals have found different ways of marketing their services.
Ways of Marketing
"Marketing is how your office is decorated," remarks Irwin Braun, president of Braun Advertising and a student of the subject. "Marketing is what kind of service you give people. Marketing is how long you keep people waiting. An ad can get you into an office, and if a person is kept waiting for an hour, he'll take a walk. One famous ear, eye and throat doctor in New. York has his office reception room decorated with portraits of Presidents and actors whom he has treated. That's marketing."
Like many cities, Flint, Mich., is extremely competitive for healthcare providers. To woo patients, St. Joseph's Hospital thought up several special deals. For example, the hospital offers a packaged obstetrical program called "Special Delivery." An expectant mother gets a 24-hour hospital stay and follow-up visits for $799. A normal charge for delivery had been $2,500 to $3.000.
In advertising the offer, the hospital used the theme: "A bundle of joy . . . A bundle of money." It hit home. Deliveries climbed to 1,650 last year, from 1,200 in the previous year, a rise the hospital attributes mainly to the campaign.
Emergency Room Fees
St. Joseph's also noticed that it was rapidly losing emergency room business, especially minor emergencies, to after-hour clinics and emergency clinics not associated with hospitals. A study found that the key elements that affected a patient's choice of emergency rooms were cost and waiting time.
So instead of charging a flat fee of $65 for all emergency room patients, the hospital switched to a tier system of pegging fees to the severity of the injury. Someone with a heart attack now pays about $M, while a person with a bump on the head would be charged $25. A TV campaign promoted the new approach, and the hospital reports that emergency room business has picked up by about 10 percent in the past year.
Greg Korneluk is a Lewiston, N.Y., consultant who specializes in advising doctors on how to sell themselves. "The marketing theory that I use with physicians is that the actual core service offered to patients is pretty homogeneous," he explained. "Things like parking, appearance, staff, courtesy — all those peripheral things matter.
Mr. Korneluk, noting that a number of doctors have video games in their reception rooms, urges his clients to put TV sets in their examination rooms. "While the patient is sitting there he can watch the TV," he said. "I know a doctor in St. Louis, who has color sets in all his exam and reception rooms. That's class."
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