Medical Marketing, Trust, and the Patient-Physician Relationship

• Published in: JAMA : the journal of the American Medical Association Vol. 321; no. 1; pp. 40 - 41
• Main Authors: Ortiz, Selena E, Rosenthal, Meredith B
• Format: Journal Article
• Language: English
• Published: United States American Medical Association 01.01.2019
• Subjects: Advertising; Health care; Health services; Humans; Marketing; Physician patient relationships; Physician-Patient Relations; Trust; United States; United States; United States > US
• ISSN: 0098-7484; 1538-3598; 1538-3598
• DOI: 10.1001/jama.2018.19324

Individuals in the US are adept at holding 2 competing views about health care: on one hand, health care revolves around a sacred compact between patients and clinicians and local institutions; on the other hand, health care is a business that operates on (regulated) market principles. The subject of medical marketing brings into relief the tension between these 2 understandings of the health care sector. Indeed, for many years the American Medical Association and the American Hospital Association forbade their members from advertising on the principle that it would subvert professional integrity and undermine patient and public trust. While marketing of health services by health care practitioners and organizations and by other suppliers to consumers has grown rapidly in the decades since those moratoria were lifted and US Food and Drug Administration rules clarified, medical marketing continues to be dominated by marketing to clinicians rather than from them.