Maternity Ad Campaign Gets Patients to Shop for Quality

On www.CalHospitalCompare.org, consumers can compare five hospitals simultaneously, and see how well they do in nine maternity measurements, such as the intensive care unit mortality rate, quality of respirator complication prevention efforts, and whether the hospital frequently performs vaginal birth after the mother has already had a Cesarean. Maternity patient experience is also ranked.

The site lists hospitals as superior, above average, average, below average or poor.

C-section information "can be useful for an expecting mother or couple," the site advises, adding, "If you want to do everything possible to have a vaginal delivery, you may prefer to use a hospital with a low C-section rate. You should discuss this concern with your obstetrician."

Another ad that turned out not to be as successful as the C-section one said, "Picking the color of your baby's room can be tough. But picking a hospital to give birth just got easier."

The campaign used newspaper Web sites, such as the San Francisco Chronicle's, the nonprofit voiceofsandiego.org, and branded e-mails, which turned out to be more expensive on a cost-per-click basis, than using Google or Yahoo search engines.

With Yahoo's Right Media, the campaign used blinded placement to achieve a cost-per-click-through rate of $1.14, versus $17.70 per click-through for other, more direct approaches.

Shannon says the results of the campaign testing were so promising, the foundation is about to launch a similar type of comparison effort for long-term care, and many other projects are in the planning stages.

Shannon says that the goal of www.CalHospitalCompare.org is not to direct patients to any one hospital, but only to give them some tips about aspects of care that are better or worse.

Launched in 2007, CalHospitalCompare.org is funded by about $2 million a year, 20% of which comes from participating hospitals and 80% from health plans. In addition to maternity care, the Web site also ranks care for heart attack, heart bypass surgery, heart failure, pneumonia, as well as other conditions and surgeries.