$2 Million for What?

Some things make my stomach knot and my blood boil, and this is one of them.

One of our local hospital systems (two hospitals and some other facilities) is paying San Diego Chargers star running back LaDainian Tomlinson $2 million over five years to tell everyone how wonderful their hospitals are. The 29-year-old football player has already made television commercials and various public appearances touting the hospitals (the contract began in July 2007). He also helped the district extract $600,000 last summer from local glitterati and another gala is on the books for June.

Let me be clear: I don’t blame Mr. Tomlinson. Who would turn down such a sweet deal? And in all fairness, he is universally known in these parts as a very decent guy—even by people who are not diehard football fans. To his credit, Mr. Tomlinson has had no drunken encounters with the law, no involvement in shootings, no car crashes in the wee hours of the morning, and he has been generous to his personal charities. So all in all, the young man who has a multimillion-dollar contract with the Chargers presents a package that is very attractive to those who want his endorsement and can afford it.

But I have a problem with a hospital spending $2 million on advertising—on anyone or anything.

The question I ask is whether such an outlandish expenditure is really worth it.

Could that $400,000 a year that Tomlinson receives from the hospital system possibly be used to—um—hire a few more nurses perhaps? Or give pay raises to any of the people who work at the bedside?

This is what gets my goat: Marketing departments spend oodles of bucks on publicizing how wonderful their health facilities are, but when it comes down to it, what happens at the bedside is what the patient remembers. Their care is the yardstick by which patients measure the quality of that facility. And what happens at the bedside is mostly the responsibility of the nurse and those who work closely with him/her. It is the nurse’s burden to live up to all the expensive ads, endorsements and hype.

One thing more: Does an endorsement by a football player really sway people’s choices of hospitals?

It seems to me that most consumers choose their doctors first, and the hospital comes along with the package – not vice versa. Where a person is hospitalized is determined by where the physician or physician group has admitting privileges.

The reason this topic has surfaced again (I was angry the first time around) is that the buzz now is whether Tomlinson will be traded after this season closes. Those who know say he might be wearing an Oakland Raiders or Denver Bronco uniform next year, and the question is whether Tomlinson should still be a spokesperson for the San Diego area hospital district.

I think the decision-makers should skip that debate altogether and focus on finding a better use for the money.

What do you think about using a hospital’s resources for expensive advertising and marketing?

Should hospitals use their resources to more directly benefit its workers and patients?

Tell us what you think.