Should hospitals advertise? What level is appropriate?

Radio and TV ads have become extremely hospital for a whole slew of NYC hospitals. Now street posters are appearing, like this one for NY Presbyterian about Children's Care.

I first really started paying attention to hospital advertising two years ago because it affected me very directly.

I had just had my second colonoscopy in two years because I had Irritable Bowel Syndrome (which was beginning to drive me crazy) and my doctors were not sure it really WAS IBS.

I also found to my chagrin that my GI specialist who did the colonoscopy had no interest in treating my symptoms!! My regular internist was at a total loss and my clinic did tests (which it turned out they botched completely-- I wonder how many other tests of mine they have screwed up)

Anyway--

Then I began to hear ads on the radio about how MY hospital was leading the nation in treating IBS!!

 

(New York Presbyterian Weill Cornell, the hospital I go to on East 68th Street and York Avenue).

I asked my internist about this and he knew nothing, so I called the GI center and asked what the hell the ads were about and how I could get treated.

An incredibly arrogant and snippy nurse-receptionist actually said to me, " Oh, you're being treated my doctor X, you can't be seen for that because you would have to see Dr. Y and Dr. X has not given his assent to this!"

So I had to get in touch with my prior GI doctor on my own and asked him what objection he had to me seeing Dr. Y...I told him about the ads.

"I don't think hospitals should advertise," he said, but he also said he would approve my seeing Dr. Y.

Dr. Y turned out to be a very nice woman who loaded me with pamphlets and other written material about IBS which focused on eating habits etc.

Then two things happened: I found among the pamphlets my symptoms described exactly as " Bacterial Overload Syndrome" and at the same time there was what the media called a "revolutionary" study in Los Angeles that a lot if not most of IBS was NOT psychosomatic ( as I think my first GI doctor thought) or simply a  matter of diet, it was based on bacterial infection and could be treated with antibiotics.

I got an appointment with my new GI doctor ( this could not be done with a phone call because of hospital rules) and told her what I thought. She agreed to give me antibiotics.

Within ten days I was completely cured! What had been over a whole worsening year of misery about the IBS  suddenly ended just like THAT( flatulence and fear of losing partial control of my bowels at any moment, just  having reached the point where I was staying at home all the time because I was afraid to go..even though I had just bought a ton of special plastic underpants--)

I still have changed my diet and have occasional flare-ups of GI distress but it is not IBS, not by a long shot.

So, from a personal point of view, it may bother some people that hospitals advertise, but from my perspective it was an extraordinarily important turning point in what had become an increasingly miserable and actually crippling condition.