UCI’s Hospital Aims to Move Up-Market

Jaw set, legs bent and torso twisted in full swing, Anaheim Angels third baseman Troy Glaus adorns the cover of Sports Illustrated’s special issue commemorating the team’s World Series victory. On the back is another familiar name in Orange County.

“The Best hospital congratulates the Best team,” the full-page color ad says. “UCI Medical Center is as unique to Orange County as the Angels are.”

The $15,000 ad is the latest sign of UCI Medical Center’s revved-up campaign to transform its image as the county’s hospital for the poor into that of an innovative health-care center rivaling the best in the nation.

UCI is not just fighting for patients with the best hospitals in Orange County, like Hoag Memorial Hospital Presbyterian in Newport Beach, but with top-flight Los Angeles-area medical centers such as UCLA and Cedars-Sinai, and even the Mayo Clinic in Rochester, Minn.

At the same time, the medical center is cutting back on care for the poor, and those beds are being filled by paying patients lured by the ads in newspapers, magazines and radio highlighting the hospital’s specialists and state-of-the-art equipment.

The ad campaign also has a deeper purpose: to help attract the attention of potential donors. To meet state earthquake safety requirements, UCI is planning a $370-million hospital, which officials there hope will cap its image turnaround. Bonds and other sources are expected to pay for most of the construction, but UCI expects to have to raise about $50 million.

“We want to let the community know about the facility, and the visibility [from advertising] can’t hurt,” said Dr. Ralph Cygan, the center’s chief executive. “We’re also trying to tell the philanthropic community in Orange County it’s not a project that benefits just the university but is a unique resource for the entire community.”

Themed Ads

Advertising is not new to the medical center. But this campaign, which began in May, marks the hospital’s most concerted effort with themed advertising spotlighting UCI’s excellence.

One ad touted UCI for having the county’s only robotic-assisted surgery machine. Another announced, “We’re making cancer more treatable.” Still another bragged that the medical center was the only hospital in the county that U.S. News & World Report ranked among the nation’s best, landing 29th in gynecology and 43rd in treating kidney disease.

When the Web site www.bestdoctors.com listed 40 UCI physicians, they became the focus of another ad. The same thing happened when a coalition of mainly Fortune 500 benefit managers called UCI the safest hospital in California.

Cygan said the new emphasis came about because community and business leaders, many of them on panels that advise the medical center or help it raise money, were telling hospital officials they were doing a poor job of telling its story. The ads are aimed not only at prospective patients but at doctors who might then be more likely to make referrals to UCI.

“People haven’t associated this facility with high-quality university health care,” Cygan said.

The new campaign targets families likely to have health insurance that will pay the bills. The ads have appeared in local newspapers and editions of Time, Newsweek, Sports Illustrated and U.S. News that are delivered to Orange County’s wealthiest ZIP Codes, said Susan Rayburn, the medical center’s vice president of external affairs.

UCI officials would not say exactly how much money they are spending on advertising. Cygan said the center’s $3-million annual marketing budget has dropped slightly, but a greater proportion now is devoted to advertising.

UCI is by no means the only area hospital to advertise, especially around the fall and spring, when businesses allow employees to change health plans.

Debra Legan, vice president of marketing for Hoag, said the hospital’s ad campaigns result in more phone calls and referrals. The most successful ads, she said, are those that run on the sides of buses.

“We want to make sure when people are diagnosed with something, we’re on the top of their mind,” Legan said. “If someone is told they have cancer, we want them to know there’s a cancer center at Hoag hospital, and they should check it out.”

Competitive Medicine

Hospital advertising was low-key until the mid-1980s. But as managed care and Medicare changes made health care more competitive, hospitals began to advertise much more frequently, said Rick Wade, senior vice president of the American Hospital Assn. in Washington, D.C. He said that because some units lose money, hospitals must attract patients for treatments that bring profits.

UCI officials say they are determined to erase the image of the medical center as the county hospital; it stopped fulfilling that role after UC Irvine bought it 26 years ago.

Four months ago, UCI began cutting back the number of people it treats under the county’s Medical Services for the Indigent program, which provides care for people age 21 through 64 who earn too much to qualify for Medi-Cal but aren’t old enough for Medicare.

The care is limited to services that protect life or prevent a significant disability or serious deterioration of health.

Cygan said other Orange County hospitals were not taking in their share of these patients, that it was costing the medical center too much money to subsidize them, and that UCI was jammed with too many poor patients to serve anyone properly or to meet the university hospital’s teaching and research missions.

Despite caring for those from the indigent program and other poor patients, UCI Medical Center made $30 million last year, Rayburn said. Much of those profits were funneled to the medical school for teaching and research.

Rayburn said the heightened advertising campaign was necessary because research showed that when people were asked to name the county’s best hospitals, they mentioned Hoag and St. Joseph instead of UCI.

“We had everybody familiar with the academic part of UCI, and that we were near The Block at Orange,” said Pam Rimar, the medical center’s marketing services manager.

Message to Doctors

The medical center is staffed with 300 doctors on faculty at the UCI College of Medicine. Dr. Thomas Cesario, dean of the medical school, said the campaigns help recruit clinical professors who rely on their practices for much of their income.

“It’s hard to get them here unless we get them access to patients, and this shows them we will get them access to patients,” Cesario said of the ads.

Sometimes the doctors themselves are the focus of ads, such as a recent one on Ralph Clayman, chairman of the department of urology.

He invented a technique that allows surgeons to remove a kidney using two fingertip-sized incisions, reducing pain and complications and dramatically improving recovery time. Another spotlighted Dr. Kenneth Chang, and his technique of using an endoscope and ultrasound to diagnose gastrointestinal cancer without surgery.

UCI is working on a new ad campaign expected to debut in February. Along with a “best doctors and best hospitals” ad, they will push specific hospital programs, Rayburn said, such as a new geriatric center or a comprehensive digestive disease center, the first in Orange County.

“We want people to think of us as more than the place the ambulance takes them when they get really sick,” Rayburn said.