Recently, NPR told the story of a Texas hospital that is trying to use the "speed dating" concept to win new patients and bolster physician loyalty as well. Selected doctors and prospective patients pair off and chat for five minutes, then rotate into the next conversation. Check out the hospital's promotional video:

Clever idea. Attention-getting tactic. Yet there are numerous questions to consider... Will most physicians participate? Will referrals to the hospital increase? How scalable is it?  

And the bottom line question is: Can a good physician-patient match be made through a brief, patient-driven conversation? A Medscape poll shows that only 21% of physicians feel "speed dating" would be effective for their practice.

The key is asking the right questions, that is, questions that are predictive of a good doctor-patient match. And that is a work in progress.

The FTC is mad at the credit reporting company Experian for misleading consumers and luring them away from the government's free annual credit reports in order to get them to subscribe to a $14.95 monthly credit monitoring service. Experian is using classic marketing tactics. The government provides free credit reports at annualcreditreport.com (why not .gov?).  Experian, smelling money, bought a better-named site called freecreditreport.com, and they have been saturating the airwaves with their very popular trio of slackers singing about how they could have avoided ruining their credit if they had only tracked their status on Experian's website.

Now the government is fighting fire with fire. Their video spoofs show a remarkably similar band warning people, as the NY Times story quotes, that: Other sites may turn your head; they say they’re free, don’t be misled. Once you’re in their tangled web, they’ll sell you something else instead. 

Experian knows what they're doing, and refuses to give the FTC their freecreditreport.com domain or to cease and desist. Though they did pay a $1.25 million fine for misleading consumers; small change compared to the money they're making. The other marketing tactic is playing on people's fears. Most of us just don't need regular updates on our credit reports. But messages about identity theft, losing everything we have, etc, trigger us to buy these credit monitoring services.

Lots of people go to Experian's site for free credit reports when they mean to go to the government site, Bottom line is that Experian's marketing is effective and I believe intentionally misleading. But is it right?