Hospitals keep ad budgets healthy

If you think you've been seeing and hearing more hospital ads lately, you're right.

Several suburban hospitals have pumped up their ad budgets to tout services and gain customers.

Advocate Health Care and Central DuPage Hospital estimate their advertising spending will increase as much as 20 percent this year.

Northwest Community Hospital, where ad spending is also up, is running its new television spots this week.

"There is definitely a subset of hospitals that are spending much more," said Scott Powder, vice president of strategy, marketing and growth at Advocate, the area's largest hospital chain.

Winfield-based Central DuPage Hospital is infusing its tagline -- "Always thinking. Always caring." -- into its multimedia blitz.

"I'm not in the target market of women 25 to 64 years old," Powder said, citing an industry practice. "But even I've heard (Central DuPage's) ads."

Central DuPage officials said the campaign is not timed to coincide with its effort to win approval of a proposed $140 million proton therapy center in Warrenville. Its campaign seeks to increase its visibility and state-of-the-art services, it said.

A 2006 survey of hospitals by U.S. News & World Report ranked Central DuPage highly in a number of categories but gave it zero points for reputation, hospital officials said. That fueled the effort to ratchet up its brand-name recognition.

"We're no longer the best-kept secret in the suburbs," said Jim Spear, senior vice president at Central DuPage.

Central DuPage is running three separate radio ads, two types of newspaper ads and increasing its television selection from two to four next week, Spear said.

Feedback surveys also helped make the decision to increase advertising, said Jill Brown, vice president of marketing for Central DuPage.

"People were telling us, 'You need to get the word out (because) we had no idea CDH was this good,' " Brown said.

At Oak Brook-based Advocate, the biggest single chunk of ad dollars are going to Advocate Christ Medical Center in Oak Lawn, with the tagline "Powerful medicine. Compassionate care."

That campaign is aimed at capturing business in the growing Southwest suburbs. Advocate's seven other area hospitals adopt their own individual campaigns.

Arlington Heights-based Northwest Community Hospital -- not an Advocate hospital -- changed its tagline late last year to "Here for you." A new television commercial features an apple and emphasizes hospital accountability and transparency.

The ads are meant to emphasize Northwest Community's online report card, which shows its performance in a number of health and services categories. Other ads emphasize the changeover of its treatment centers from emergency care to immediate care for minor injuries.

"It (ad spending) tends to go up depending on what new offerings we have," said Angela Stefaniu, vice president of marketing and business development for Northwest Community.

Spending on hospital advertising campaigns varies widely but can be significant. Major campaigns can cost $3 million to $5 million. But an average hospital advertising budget in the Chicago area was in the range of $250,000 in 2006, according to industry estimates.

Critics say too much is spent on hospital ads and the millions spent on ads should be put into hospital services.

"Spending that amount of money that arguably provides no benefits to the community is at least very questionable," said Art Levin, director of the Center for Medical Consumers, a New York City-based nonprofit medical consumer group.

Several suburban hospitals in the area said they are not spending more on ads.

Arlington Heights-based Alexian Brothers Hospital Network, Libertyville-based Condell Medical Center and Naperville-based Edward Hospital each said their spending will be about what they traditionally spend on marketing.

Nationally, most ad spending by hospitals is on "help wanted" ads for physicians and nurses, according to Rick Wade, spokesman for the American Hospital Association, based in New York City.

"But my guess is that the amount of spending on traditional ads is probably flat or going down a bit nationally," Wade said.

Most of the Chicago area's estimated 100 hospitals are likely to spend less than 1 percent of their annual revenue on advertising, according to the industry.