The scene is shadowy, and the background music foreboding. On the TV screen, a stream of beleaguered humans stand in an unending line.
“If you’re waiting patiently for a liver transplant, it could cost you your life,” warns the narrator.
One man pulls another out of the queue, signaling an escape. Both smile.
Is this a dystopian video game? Gritty drama? Neither. It is a commercial for the living-donor liver transplant center at the University of Pittsburgh Medical Center, an academic hospital embroiled in a high-profile battle with the region’s dominant health plan and now making a play to a national audience.
Hospitals are using TV spots like this one to attract lucrative patients into their hospitals as health care costs and industry competition escalate. Some institutions use them to build national and international brands on niche but high-priced health services. They’re often procedures involving expensive technology that benefit only a sliver of the population. But they could lure wealthy patients seeking high-end care and can also give hospitals some leverage with insurers.
“Hospitals are competing, just like any other business,” said Mark Fratrik, an economist at BIA Advisory Services, a media consulting firm.
UPMC’s ad has been airing nationally this year during cable news shows. Advertising research company iSpot.tv estimates the campaign’s cost at more than $3 million since it first aired in early September. The commercial is aimed at the estimated 14,000 people on the United States liver transplant list, hospital officials said.
But some analysts worry that these hospital advertisements are incomplete or misleading.
“We have choices about where we seek medical care,” said Dr. Yael Schenker, an associate professor of medicine at the University of Pittsburgh, who has researched hospital advertising but was not involved with the liver transplant ad. “We want to spend our money wisely, and need information about the quality and cost of health…