Hospital advertising has long been an easy target, from both internal and external critics. It seems that whenever it's time for a healthcare organization to tighten its belt, the marketing team and its budget takes the biggest hit.
And yet, the media and general public decry the fact that a hospital needs to promote itself at all.
It's funny—for being professionals geared around boosting their organizations' brands, hospital marketers are hard pressed to enhance their own reputations.
Every once in a while—this month, for example—a slew of media criticisms are published in short succession, reporting on the thousands or millions of dollars hospitals spend on advertising while failing to mention the percentage of the total organizational budget that it accounts for.
Normally, we grin and bear it and move on. Not this time.
The St. Louis Post-Dispatch recently published an article dissecting its competitive healthcare market. While the reporting is balanced, it starts with a markedly negative tone by quoting Sidney Wolfe, director of the non-profit consumer advocacy group, Public Citizen.
"Hospitals seem to be spending money left and right trying to get more patients," he said. "Absent significant costs controls, there's nothing to stop them. It's siphoning money away from healthcare. Advertising shouldn't be confused with taking care of patients or improving patient care."
I think we can all agree that his last sentence isn't worth addressing. But in this column I will explain why, in the vast majority of hospitals, advertising and marketing spending is necessary, effective, and does not take away from quality of care.
Ads as patient education
I've spoken to hundreds of hospital marketers over the years. Ask any one of them the most important aspect of their marketing strategy, and each one will point to patient education.
Without targeted advertising, a patient may not know he or she can receive cancer treatment closer to home, or that his or her community medical center is holding a lecture series on diabetes management, or that his or her primary care provider now uses an online patient portal.
Marketing and advertising is "core to our mission to educate the public," Missouri Hospital Association spokesman David Dillon told the Post-Dispatch. And I think you'll find that most hospitals and health systems include patient education in their organization's mission as well. It's difficult to care for the community if they don't know who you are, what you stand for, and the services you provide.
St. Louis University Hospital spokesperson Laura Keller told the paper that hospitals advertise for noble reasons as well as realistic ones.
"I don't think it ever hurts to remind someone that there are lots of choices that you have if you're dealing with a major health issue," she says. "We need to educate the patient, and there are good messages there. On the business side, people need to understand that without money we cannot support our mission."
The business case
The hospital advertising critics always seem to forget about the business side. Aside from staying true to their mission, hospitals need to advertise to maintain or enhance revenue flow. Even non-profit hospitals need to market to insured patients and promote high-grossing service lines so that they are able to continue to care for the uninsured.
And while some larger health systems spend what seems like large amounts of money on advertising, on average, the hospital marketing budget accounts for a tiny portion of the overall organizational budget.
"While we do spend money on marketing and advertising, far less than a penny of every dollar of our expenses goes to that and we try to be prudent in those expenses," Bob Porter, chief strategy officer for the non-profit SSM Healthcare-St. Louis said. "For us, healthcare is a social good, not a commodity."
Listening to the critics
Another hospital advertising criticism that came out this month was written by a healthcare insider, Upstate University Hospital CEO, John McCabe. On his blog he lists services that far-away hospitals are promoting in his market and implies that this is unethical because his hospital provides the same services, with the same high-quality care closer to home. While this is self-serving, (hey, it's his blog) he goes on to make a few thought-provoking points.
McCabe posits that the current hospital advertising environment doesn't jibe with the healthcare reform goal of providing more and better care at less expense.
"We seem to be in a cycle that can't be broken," he says. "Perhaps it is a good time as all of us struggle, and all of us work to implement healthcare reform, that we rethink where the precious resources we have to improve patient care are best spent."
In the years to come, hospital marketers will be tasked with making advertising more meaningful, more results-driven, and more in-step with what the public demands. The sooner your organization—and the industry as a whole—figures out how to do this, the better off we'll be.
Marianne Aiello is a contributing writer at HealthLeaders Media.