Learn about marketing healthcare.
The study and practice of healthcare marketing ethics is founded upon the obligation that the industry has toward the patient or customer. More specifically, healthcare professionals believe that there should be a distinction between healthcare marketing ethics and marketing ethics for other industries, because those in the industry must establish a different position of trust with regard to their patients or customers. Patients and customers are relying on the professionals for advice regarding their health and welfare, so marketing ethics must keep these roles in mind.
Patient Welfare
Patient welfare is at the forefront of healthcare marketing ethics. Healthcare professionals have a moral--and, in most cases, legal--obligation to offer advice that is in the best interest of the individual patient's welfare. When patient health/welfare and the professional's fee come into conflict, the patient must come first. As a result, hospitals and clinics are typically to accept patients with serious conditions, whether or not those patients will be able to pay for the treatment.
Public Accountability
Unlike other areas of marketing, healthcare marketing has an added obligation to the public in accountability. Because of the greater role of trust, healthcare marketers must be willing to provide complete transparency in their techniques so that the public may see the fairness and honesty in the marketing policies.
Accuracy in Advertising
Advertising by its very nature encourages consumers to pursue items that they may or may not really need but that they should believe themselves to need. In the healthcare industry, advertising once again falls under the dictates of "patient first," and any healthcare or medical-related advertising is expected to be as accurate and even disinterested as possible in its content, in order to avoid swaying the consumer to a course of action that might not be beneficial or even necessary.
Cost and Services
Healthcare marketing ethics state that medical professionals should not recommend or prescribe treatment that is not essential for the patient's health, just to increase profits. In most cases, unnecessary services do not have to be dangerous or life-threatening to fall into this category: a professional who recommends that a patient take a medication or pursue a surgical procedure that is not harmful but is also not necessary--but is financially beneficial for the professional--would violate healthcare marketing ethics.
Fee Splitting
With the increased need for doctors to supplement their incomes--which have been reduced as a result of insurance costs and government involvement in the industry--fee-splitting has become an issue of importance within healthcare marketing ethics. Fee splitting is the result of referrals: a doctor or medical broker refers a patient to a specialist doctor or surgeon, and the two medical professionals split the fee. Because of the potential for profit overriding the patient's needs, the American Medical Association labels fee splitting to be unethical, and the practice, in some form or another, is illegal in all 50 U.S. states.
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