Several hospitals are experimenting with webcasts of surgery, surgeons Twittering during surgery, and patients blogging about their procedures in an attempt to attract new patients, reports The New York Times. The story describes a webcast of a patient’s recent brain surgery at Methodist University Hospital in Memphis, which was viewed by more than 2,000 people, previewed on YouTube by 21,000, and resulted in three new patients. The story estimates that 250 hospitals use such unconventional marketing tools as YouTube, Facebook, Twitter, or blogs to showcase their surgical expertise or fill clinical trials, among them Henry Ford Hospital in Detroit, the University of California at San Francisco, and Genesis Health System in Davenport, Iowa. “The goal is to further our reputation as well as to educate the community, who will ask their physicians about our care,” Methodist’s marketing director Jill Fazakerly told the Times. Ethicists, however, have expressed concerns that the marketing trend violates patient privacy and leads viewers to believe that results from medical and surgical interventions are perfect every time.
