Hospital Chains Target Women in Ad Pitches : Offer Special Services to Drum Up Business
Long sought after by companies that make over-the-counter drugs, American women have become a prime advertising target for hospitals, which believe that women are big health-care consumers and primary arbiters of where others in their household will receive medical care.
Large nationwide chains such as Louisville-based Humana Inc. and smaller facilities are vying for women’s attention in television, newspaper and radio ads. And it’s not just would-be mothers they are after, either.
Hospitals--whose average occupancy rate fell to 68% in mid-1984 from 76% in 1980--are trying to fill their empty beds by advertising services such as breast cancer screening, osteoplastic surgery to repair brittle bones and other programs designed to meet the health-care needs of women who may be past child-bearing age, experts say.
“More and more women are asking for respect from hospitals--that (doctors) not just assume that a Pap smear takes care of all of their health needs,” said Sally J. Rynne, president of Women’s Health Consultants in Evanston, Ill. “Advertising helps demonstrate that a hospital understands the problems.” However, Rynne acknowledges that some current efforts may simply be providing a false sense of reassurance.
More Marketing Oriented
Adds Arthur C. Sturm, president of Chicago-based Sturm Communications Group, a leading health-care advertising firm: “Hospitals are becoming more marketing oriented in the way they do business. It’s not just a promotional gimmick,” Sturm said of the new advertising effort aimed at women. “These programs are definitely meeting a big demand.”
Women are admitted to the nation’s 6,000 hospitals more frequently than men, even factoring out the number of hospital admissions for childbirth, according to 1983 data from the National Center for Health Statistics, a branch of the Department of Health and Human Services. The number of female admissions is 15% higher than the number of male admissions, the center says.
In addition, more women have gained the financial wherewithal to make choices about their medical care in recent years. Women have flooded the job market, taking two-thirds of the jobs created since 1974, according to the Labor Department.
Experts trace the current interest in women’s health care to 1971, when the book “Our Bodies, Ourselves,” was published.
In response to the awareness that the book generated, hospitals from New York to California began redirecting their marketing efforts--telling women that they understood their special needs.
A women’s health center in Nashville, for example, advertises special medical services for women “because,” the ad says, “there is a difference” between females and males.
Good Samaritan Medical Center in Milwaukee is even more direct. “We don’t treat you like a little girl,” proclaims a series of advertisements that have run in local newspapers and on city radio stations.
Understands Their Needs
Explains Carol Talatzko, director of Samaritan’s Women’s Health Institute: “The idea behind our campaign . . . is that women are intelligent enough to make their own health-care decisions if they are given enough information. We are trying to show that our staff understands the needs of women.”
Perhaps the most extensive marketing campaign has been launched by a hospital that is building a center to house its women’s medical programs.
Norfolk General Hospital in Norfolk, Va., which has a marketing staff of six, began its advertising effort last October with a full-page ad in local newspapers declaring that the hospital knows “how to treat a lady.”
In addition, the hospital has been airing a 30-second TV ad showing women exercising while an announcer intones: “For all those women who take their health seriously, there is a hospital that takes them seriously,” a hospital “that delivers information and advice as well as babies.”
Karen Corrigan, the hospital’s director of marketing, says the ads have generated tremendous response.
“On a normal day we get 50 or 60 phone calls,” Corrigan said. “After we ran our first ad, we got 300 phone calls a day asking about our programs.” Hospital referrals for maternity services increased 400%, she said.
Such success stories are helping to stimulate business at firms such as York/Alpern Inc. of Los Angeles, one of the advertising agencies spearheading efforts to tap the women’s market.
York/Alpern designed an ad campaign for a multispecialty medical group in Redondo Beach that highlights the problems of both the working mother and the traditional housewife. The ad shows an exhausted woman executive, suffering from a cold, a twisted ankle and an upset stomach, among other ailments.
“On the job and off,” the ad states, “it’s the dozens of minor illnesses and injuries that don’t require the hours of waiting or expense of a hospital emergency room” that complicate a woman’s life; the “Urgent Care Center is there for those times.”
“Being working parents, both Barbara (Alpern) and I brought a lot of compassion to that ad,” said Karen York, chief executive of the agency that she and Alpern founded 10 years ago. “Because of the demographics of the Redondo Beach community, we know there are a lot of working women in the area. We used humor to demystify (concerns about) accessing health care.”
Different Approach
The firm used a different approach for an ad campaign for a breast cancer screening center opened late last year in San Francisco’s financial district by Children’s Hospital. Realizing that breast cancer is a sensitive subject, the campaign addressed women with “concern and respect,” said York.
“It’s not easy to sell people on something that they would rather not know about,” York said. “Our ad was designed to communicate a certain amount of urgency” but show that help was available in a convenient location.
Indeed, experts agree that, to be effective, advertising aimed at the women’s health-care market must address the three “C’s”: comfort, convenience and competence.
Nevertheless, in reaching out to the working woman, hospitals have not neglected their bread-and-butter business--obstetrical care. But the tone of their pitch is changing.
In the past, hospitals advertised extras such as post-delivery candlelight dinners as a way to draw clients.
Now, in an era of birthing options, that approach has been largely abandoned in favor of one that emphasizes the hospital’s willingness to accommodate busy schedules and special needs of expectant parents.
Could Fade Fast
Increased competition has forced hospitals to mount such slick promotions to stimulate demand for services, experts say. But hospitals’ new marketing push for women’s health-care dollars could be short-lived since it comes at a time when more insurance companies are imposing cost-saving restrictions on where Americans can be treated.
Traditional insurance plans that allow a patient to select a treatment location are losing ground to lower-cost plans such as health maintenance organizations, which now serve about 15 million people. Both HMOs and another type of popular medical plan, preferred provider organizations, restrict which doctors a patient can see.
Still, 35% of all hospital patients select their own hospitals, according to York/Alpern.
“Hospitals are extremely dependent on physician referrals,” said York/Alpern’s York. “But, because of increased mobility in our society, the traditional relationship between family physicians and mothers has broken down,” she said. “Women are making choices based on new criteria. That’s why advertising is so important.”
