Marketing of healthcare services in Denmark: the concept of misleading advertising
- PDF / 610,725 Bytes
- 4 Pages / 595.276 x 790.866 pts Page_size
- 18 Downloads / 181 Views
COMMENTARY
Marketing of healthcare services in Denmark: the concept of misleading advertising Lise Aagaard1 Received: 5 January 2020 / Revised: 24 June 2020 / Accepted: 24 July 2020 © Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2020
Abstract As severe ill and incurable patients can be easy victims of misleading advertising activities for dangerous and non-effective healthcare treatments, the marketing of healthcare services are in many jurisdictions legislations tightly regulated. This article reviews the Danish regulation on marketing of healthcare services to identify which types of advertising activities that are legal. As the legislation only allows healthcare authorities to control the marketing and not the content and quality of the marketed healthcare services, their ability to intervene in serious cases of misleading advertising is limited. Misleading advertising are statements with the purpose to exaggerate or underestimate the effects and risks of healthcare services or to prevent patients from seeking conventional medical treatments. From a public health perspective, there is a need for a common EU legislation for regulation of the marketing of healthcare services as the increasing use of information technologies makes it possible for the providers to access consumers and patients directly across countries and legal systems. Keywords Healthcare services · Marketing · Misleading advertising · Denmark
Impacts on practice • Health authorities must prohibit non-authorised health-
care providers from the marketing of potentially dangerous treatments to severe and deadly ill patients. • The penalties for violation of the marketing rules must be increased in order to make it less economically attractive for providers of healthcare services to break the law. • An independent national Council with the purpose to guide patients in their selection of safe and evidencebased healthcare services should be established. Over the last decade, consumers and patients request for healthcare services have increased considerably [1]. Healthcare services are defined as activities that aim to improve or maintain peoples’ health condition, e.g. examination, diagnosis, treatment, rehabilitation, healthcare and healthcare prevention measures for the individual patient [1]. As severe ill and incurable patients can be easy victims * Lise Aagaard [email protected] 1
National Committee on Health Research Ethics, Ørestads Boulevard 5, 2300 Copenhagen K, Denmark
of misinformation and misleading marketing for dangerous and non-effective treatments, the marketing of healthcare services are in many jurisdictions legislations tightly regulated [2]. In the European Union (EU), national law regulates the marketing of healthcare services. Medicines and medical devices are not classified as healthcare services, as harmonized EU law regulates their marketing activities [3, 4]. In Denmark, the regulation on marketing of healthcare services (hereafter the “marketing legislation”) came into force in 2003. The purpose of the marketing legislation wer
Data Loading...
