Hospitals increasingly are mining patients' health and financial records to market specialty services such as cancer, cardiac and orthopedic care to a targeted group of individuals, Kaiser Health News/USA Today reports.
To develop the targeted mailings, hospitals use patient data, as well as detailed information on local residents that they purchase from consumer marketing firms.
According to KHN/USA Today, about 20% of U.S. hospitals now use targeted direct mail strategies to bring in additional revenue for certain services.
Guy Miller, a Chicago-based health care consultant, said that hospitals' implementation of electronic health records likely will accelerate the trend.
Concerns About the Practice
Although hospital executives say the targeted mailings promote needed services, some privacy advocates have expressed concern about the use of patient data for marketing purposes.
Doug Heller -- executive director of Consumer Watchdog -- criticized marketing strategies that target patients with private health plans, which typically reimburse hospitals at higher rates than government health insurance. Heller said, "When marketing is picking and choosing based on people's financial status, it is inherently discriminating against patients who have every right and need for medical information."
Deven McGraw -- director of the Health Privacy Project at the Center for Democracy and Technology -- said federal law lets hospitals use a patient's health records to provide the individual with information about services that could benefit them. However, she said that "sometimes this is about generating business for a new piece of equipment that the hospital just bought," which "creeps closer to the line" about whether the practice is legal (Galewitz, Kaiser Health News/USA Today, 2/5).