Nine Channels Proposed, Six Survived: A Lung Screening Channel Mix and $148,100 Budget Filtered Through Privacy Rules and Referral Law
Student Name
American College of Education
HLTH5673: Marketing for Healthcare Professionals
Module 5 Assignment
Instructor Name
July 31, 2028
The Proposed Channels
The composite hospital's lung screening program now has a position, close to home with a navigator for every abnormal result, and three tested messages, one each for former smokers connected to primary care, newly eligible adults and current smokers. The marketing team proposed nine ways to deliver them: letters and patient portal messages from the hospital's employed primary care practices to patients identified in their registries; paid social media advertising targeted to adults aged 50 to 80, with the platform's tracking pixel on the program's web pages to measure conversions; paid search advertising; local radio; a purchased mailing list of likely smokers from a data broker; a referral thank-you program giving independent physicians a gift card for every ten referrals; physician education sessions; community screening days in the rural eastern towns with van transportation; and text message reminders.
Each channel was reviewed by the hospital's privacy officer and compliance counsel before any money was committed. In health care marketing, the first question about a channel is not whether it works, but whether the hospital is allowed to use it the way it works best.
Filter One: HIPAA and the Hospital's Own Patients
Letters and portal messages from the hospital's employed practices passed. Under HIPAA, a covered entity's communication describing its own health-related services to its own patients is generally not treated as marketing requiring authorization, as long as no third party pays for it. The eight practices are part of the same covered entity as the hospital, so they may use their registries to identify patients who appear eligible and invite them to screening. The same does not apply to independent practices: the hospital may not ask them to share patient lists for its outreach. Instead, it will offer independent practices the same letter template to send under their own names.
Text message reminders passed with a change. Texts will go only to patients who have consented to receive text messages from their practice, and they will say only that the practice has a message waiting in the patient portal, not mention lung cancer or smoking, since a text can be seen by anyone who picks up the phone. The purchased list of likely smokers failed. Buying data inferred about people's health from a broker and mailing them about lung cancer would be legal in some forms but was judged a breach of the trust the program's position depends on, and the list's accuracy was unknown.
Filter Two: Online Tracking
The proposal to place a social media platform's tracking pixel on the program's web pages failed. The Department of Health and Human Services' Office for Civil Rights has issued guidance that tracking technologies on a regulated entity's web pages can disclose protected health information to technology vendors, such as when a visitor enters health information or schedules an appointment, and that such disclosures require a business associate agreement or the individual's authorization (U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, Office for Civil Rights, 2024). The program's eligibility check asks about smoking history, which is exactly the kind of information that must not flow to an advertising platform. The problem is widespread: Friedman et al. (2023) found third-party tracking on 98.6 percent of U.S. hospital websites, including transfers to social media companies, advertising firms and data brokers.
Paid social advertising itself survived in a limited form: advertisements will target by age and geography only, with no health-interest targeting, and will send people to a phone number with its own call-tracking line rather than to a tracked web form. Paid search also survived on the same terms, measured by calls rather than pixels. The team accepted less precise measurement as the price of keeping patients' health information away from advertisers.
Filter Three: Paying for Referrals
The referral thank-you program failed immediately. Federal law prohibits offering anything of value to induce referrals of services paid for by federal health care programs, and lung screening is largely paid by Medicare. A gift card for every ten referrals is a textbook example of what the law forbids, regardless of intent. Physician education sessions survived with safeguards: they will present the 2021 criteria, the shared decision-making requirement and the program's navigation process, be open to all area physicians, include only modest refreshments within the hospital's policy and never be tied to referral volume. The program will also send each referring physician a quarterly report on their patients' results and follow-up, which improves care and builds confidence without offering anything of value.
The Surviving Channels by Segment
Six channels remain. For former smokers connected to primary care, the largest segment, the channels are practice letters and portal messages, text reminders and physician education, expected to yield about 615 additional screenings. For newly eligible adults, the same practice channels plus paid search, age-and-place social advertising and local radio, expected to yield about 170. For current smokers, practice outreach through the tobacco treatment program and radio, expected to yield about 130. For the rural eastern towns, community screening days with van transport, organized with the rural clinic and the community health center, expected to yield about 60. For uninsured residents, the community health center partnership, with financial counselors on screening days, expected to yield about 15. Total expected additional screenings are about 990 in the first year. Each screening day will have the program's navigator on site to take smoking histories, complete the eligibility check and arrange any follow-up before people leave, because a randomized trial in community health centers found that navigation raised screening CT use among current smokers from 8.6 percent to 23.5 percent (Percac-Lima et al., 2018). The rural clinic's own staff will invite patients, since a familiar name on the invitation matters more in those towns than any advertisement.
The Budget
The first-year budget is $148,100. Registry cleanup, with medical assistants recording pack-year histories at routine visits, costs $22,000. Letters and portal messages, about 6,000 letters, cost $5,100. Paid search costs $18,000 and local radio $24,000. Ten community screening days with van transportation cost $25,000. Spanish-language materials and a stipend for a bilingual community health worker cost $12,000. Physician education costs $6,000, print materials $8,000, creative design and production $20,000 and evaluation, including call tracking and analysis, $8,000. The navigator and nurse practitioner time are operating costs of the program, not marketing, and are budgeted separately. The registry cleanup line is the least visible and among the most important. In a Seattle screening program, Modin et al. (2017) found that the electronic record understated pack-years for 85 percent of referred patients, by a median of 29 pack-years, so outreach driven by uncorrected records would pass over a large share of the eligible residents.
At about 990 additional screenings, the marketing cost is about $150 per screening, before counting the follow-up imaging, visits and, for the few patients with early cancers, treatment that screening leads to. The channels with the lowest cost per screening, practice letters and portal messages, also carry the least privacy risk, which is not a coincidence: communicating with patients through the clinicians they already trust is both the most effective and the most defensible channel the program has.
References
Friedman, A. B., Merchant, R. M., Maley, A., Farhat, K., Smith, K., Felkins, J., Gonzales, R. E., Bauer, L., & McCoy, M. S. (2023). Widespread third-party tracking on hospital websites poses privacy risks for patients and legal liability for hospitals. Health Affairs, 42(4), 508-515. https://doi.org/10.1377/hlthaff.2022.01205
Modin, H. E., Fathi, J. T., Gilbert, C. R., Wilshire, C. L., Wilson, A. K., Aye, R. W., Farivar, A. S., Louie, B. E., Vallières, E., & Gorden, J. A. (2017). Pack-year cigarette smoking history for determination of lung cancer screening eligibility: Comparison of the electronic medical record versus a shared decision-making conversation. Annals of the American Thoracic Society, 14(8), 1320-1325. https://doi.org/10.1513/AnnalsATS.201612-984OC
Percac-Lima, S., Ashburner, J. M., Rigotti, N. A., Park, E. R., Chang, Y., Kuchukhidze, S., & Atlas, S. J. (2018). Patient navigation for lung cancer screening among current smokers in community health centers: A randomized controlled trial. Cancer Medicine, 7(3), 894-902. https://doi.org/10.1002/cam4.1297
U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, Office for Civil Rights. (2024). Use of online tracking technologies by HIPAA covered entities and business associates. U.S. Department of Health and Human Services.
How this HLTH 5673 Module 5 example is structured
HLTH 5673 Module 5 typically assembles channels and budget, with privacy and referral rules deciding what survives; your classroom's instructions decide the budget scale and the rules to apply. This example lists the proposed channels first, then applies each legal and ethical filter in turn, stating which channels it removed or changed and why. The surviving channels are matched to segments, and the budget is presented line by line with expected results, so the cost per screening can be judged against the program's value.
HLTH5673 Module 5 questions, answered
What does HLTH5673 Module 5 usually ask for?
HLTH5673 Module 5 typically asks students to choose marketing channels and build a budget for a health care service, often with attention to privacy rules, referral laws and ethics. Many sections expect the budget to be linked to expected results. Your classroom's instructions decide the budget scale and format.
Can a hospital use tracking pixels on its service web pages?
Federal guidance warns that tracking technologies on pages where visitors enter health information or schedule care can disclose protected health information to vendors, which requires a business associate agreement or authorization. Many hospitals remove such pixels and measure results through call tracking or privacy-safe analytics instead.
Can a hospital reward physicians for referrals?
No. Offering anything of value to induce referrals for services paid by federal health care programs is prohibited, whatever the intent. Education open to all physicians and reports on their patients' care are acceptable when they are not tied to referral volume.
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