Volume 71 Number 4 September 2004	back to contents

Address all correspondence to Stephen R. Latham, J.D., Ph.D., Director, Center for Health Law and Policy, Quinnipiac University School of Law, 275 Mount Carmel Avenue, Hamden, CT 06518.

An earlier version of this paper was presented at the Issues in Medical Ethics 2001 Conference at the Mount Sinai School of Medicine, New York, NY on November 2, 2001, and updated February 2004.

ABSTRACT
This paper deals with the ethics of marketing medical services by physicians, medical groups, hospitals and other mainstream medical caregivers in the United States. It does not deal with pharmaceutical marketing, since that raises a number of special issues, some of them legal and some having to do with the unique culture of pharmaceutical marketing, which really ought to be dealt with separately. Nor does it touch on the little-explored field of marketing alternative and complementary medicine. It begins with a general description of what is included in “the marketing process.” It then briefly tours some of the difficulties faced by those who would market medical services ethically, and ends with some comments on the relevance of professionalism to ethical marketing.

KEY WORDS
Professionalism, medical marketing, market competition, health care, product, placement, price, promotion.