Quebec Embarks on Major Ad Blitz Promoting Health Reform
The Quebec government is spending $1.9 million on a two-month advertising campaign to promote its reform of the province's healthcare system - including the closing of several hospitals.
The campaign - featuring radio and television spots, magazine ads, eight-page fliers sent to 3.5 million Quebec households, and a special Internet site (http://www.msss.gov.gc.ca) - is needed now "because the public needs to be informed and reassured" about the changes, Health Minister Jean Rochon said in a press statement last week.
Quebec's move two years ago to revamp the healthcare system meant cutting millions of dollars from health budgets, making hospitals make do with less and plowing some of the savings into community-based services like CLSCs and home care.
Big Apple Hospitals Make a Name for Themselves
When New York hospitals first began advertising five years ago, they did so tentatively, emphasizing referral networks and specific services.
Now, those same institutions are acting like consumer product companies, more than doubling their spending on advertising in 1996 and launching campaigns designed to establish a brand identity. "We used to sell services. Now we are selling the total system,'' says Lyn Hill, president of the Healthcare Public Relations and Marketing Society of Greater New York, which represents about 250 professionals. Total hospital advertising in the New York metro area jumped to a whopping $41 million for the first three quarters of 1996, nearly double the $22 million spent in the entire year of 1995.
The largest amount was spent on print-$27 million for the first nine months of 1996; radio got $10.7 million and television received $3.3 million, according to Competitive Media Reporting, in Manhattan. (Healthcare PR and Marketing Society of Greater NY, 212/237-1460)
Hospitals Are Not Shy About Advertising, Says Study
U.S. hospitals alone spent more than $1 billion on advertising in 1995, according to figures from ORC Health Care of Evanston, Ill. (Data from 1996 isn't yet available.) Steven Steiber, ORC's national healthcare practice director, said he thinks the growth will continue in 1997, fueled by consolidation and competition. "That allows them to make use of more expensive advertising, such as broadcast," he said. (ORC, 847/540-8971)
Drug Company Says It Won't Change Trials Despite Reports
Eli Lilly and Co. will not change the way it tests experimental drugs, despite a report that it exploits homeless alcoholics by offering them attractive incentives to participate, the company said last month.
A story in the Wall Street Journal questioned whether the test subjects -virtually all of them men - understand the risks they are taking when they volunteer to be the first humans to try experimental drugs. Lilly pays them $85 a day, plus room and board, for participating in the tests at the Lilly Laboratory for Clinical Research at Wishard Memorial Hospital.
The story also questions the reliability of test results involving alcoholics - specifically citing trials of a hepatitis drug that killed five people in 1993 in a secondary round of tests. "The fact that a newspaper chose to print a story doesn't necessarily mean that everything contained in that story is true and accurate," said Lilly spokesman Ed West. "There's no need to make any changes in our practices."
Although the Journal article posed a public relations problem for Lilly, "from a stock standpoint, it's really been a non-event," said NatCity Investment's David Lebedeff.
AMA Presents 20th Annual FREDDIE Awards
Forty-five producers of medical films, video and Web sites received medical film's highest honors last month at the 20th annual International Health and Medical Film Competition presented by the American Medical Association (AMA) last month. Bob Saget of "America's Funniest Home Videos" hosted the awards ceremony and presented a special award to the Scleroderma Foundation and its founder Sharon Monsky. Saget's siter, Gay, died of scleroderma in 1994. A movie produced and directed by Saget, "For Hope," was recently aired on ABC television.
Actor Jamie Farr of television's "M*A*S*H," joined G.W. Bailey of the "Jeff Foxworthy Show" to honor the historic front-lines medical care provided by the U.S. Army Medical Department with a Lifetime Achievement Award. Jerry Lewis and his Muscular Dystrophy Association also received a Lifetime Achievement Award from pioneer heart surgeon Michael DeBakey, M.D.
The C. Everett Koop, M.D., Award for best film for health professionals went to "Sub-Tenon's Anesthesia" produced by Connecticut Eye Research Foundation Inc. (American Medical Association, 312-464-5382)
State's HMOs Trying To Counter Tarnished Image
Plagued by what it calls "anecdotal horror stories perpetuated by the media," managed care is grappling with the issue of how to fight back. The Florida Association of HMOs, which represents 23 managed care organizations across the state, had planned to battle critics by hiring a public relations firm to counter what it sees as increasing consumer and media attacks.
Richard Dorff, the association's executive director, says in the last four years, the media has looked at isolated situations and, "based in many instances on supposition, conjecture and hearsay, taken things out of context."
But after polling some 500 Floridians last month, the association changed its mind about hiring a PR firm, says Dorff. The survey's findings: "While people have considered what the news media is reporting, it didn't have a major effect on their selection of healthcare benefits." (FL Assoc. of HMOs, 305/786-1091)