The point of Shila Renee Mullins’s brain surgery was to remove a malignant tumor threatening to paralyze her left side. But Methodist University Hospital in Memphis also saw an opportunity to promote the hospital to prospective patients.

Healthcare is just a business after all .Our health care system needs to be fixed but maybe it is nothing a little marketing can’t cure.  Methodist University Hospital in Memphis Tennessee substituted a model for the real patient in the promo ads for the brain surgery broadcast. Maybe this is something that almost had to happen, hospital marketing one step beyond. But,should there be any, would the patient get the royalties? Any discount? What if the video goes viral,a performance bonus?  Will there be awards perhaps in the future for best doctor performing in a surgery webcast? Suppose the patient has the poor taste not to recovery as advertised?  Ethics ?

So, a video webcast of Ms. Mullins’s awake craniotomy, in which the patient remains conscious and talking while surgeons prod and cut inside her brain, was promoted with infomercials and newspaper advertisements featuring a photograph of a beautiful model, not Ms. Mullins.

This time, Methodist did not use billboards as it has with other operations, deeming this procedure too sensitive. But its marketing department monitors how many people have watched the Webcast (2,212), seen a preview on Youtube(21,555) and requested appointments (3).

“The goal is to further our reputation as well as to educate the community, who will ask their physicians about our care,” said Jill Fazakerly, Methodist’s marketing director.

In one unexpected marketing success, after Methodist advertised a coming brain-surgery Webcast, a man called, volunteering to be the patient. Methodist agreed. “He told Dr. Sills that if he was operating live on the Web, he must be pretty darn good,” Ms. Fazakerly said.

Brain Webcasts also “build business for our other departments,” she said.

http://www.nytimes.com/2009/05…