Effects and Ethics of Healthcare Advertising

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It is crucial to distinguish between healthcare marketing and advertising in other fields. In other industries, consumers can differentiate between products and match their needs with product specifications. However, healthcare consumers tend to trust healthcare providers blindly. Therefore, healthcare providers have a legal and ethical obligation to be truthful and faithful in their promises, actions, and intentions. Consequently, healthcare marketing, as a vital component of healthcare organizations, must follow the same ethical rules. This paper will summarize the article "Advertising Gone Too Far" and evaluate the impact of healthcare marketing ethics on consumerism and healthcare organizations. It will also analyze the effects of regulations and oversight organizations on healthcare delivery and propose ways to ensure compliance. This article highlights the remarkable changes in healthcare marketing over the last few decades, from being a passive secondary measure to becoming an essential active component of any healthcare organization. These changes have become more prominent with the widespread trend of healthcare consumerism, which offers consumers more options and choices than ever before. In that regard, the author strongly supports the role of healthcare marketing as a tool used to encourage patients to become more engaged in their care. However, today's media often presents loads of healthcare advertisements that ignore regulations and use biased information to support false and deceptive claims. The rules of healthcare marketing are mainly regulated by the American Marketing Association (Gershon & Buerstatte, 2003), the Federal Trade Commission (FTC), the American College of Healthcare Executives, the American Hospital Association, and the Catholic Hospital Association (Quinn, 2008)....

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...(2013). The three “Es” of healthcare consumerism: Empathy, engagement, empowerment. Managed Care Outlook, 26(23), 1-9. Conn, L. C. & Vernaglia, L. W. (2011). Health care marketing arrangements: Don’t sleep too tight. Journal of Health Care Compliance, 13(2), 39-43. Gershon, H. J. & Buerstatte, G. E. (2003). The E in marketing: Ethics in the age of misbehavior. Journal of Healthcare Management, 48(5), 292-293. Quinn, C. (2008). Advertising gone too far? Marketing Health Services, 28(4), 20-23. Weiss, R. (2012). Our time is now. Marketing Health Services, 23(3), 30-31. Weiss, R. (2013). Modern marketing defined. Marketing Health Services, 33(1), 12-13.

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