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Second Opinion Advertisements for Dentists

Posted on 07. Jan, 2012 by wisdom.

An article in The Journal of the American Dental Association titled “Are Advertisements That Offer ‘Free Second Opinions’ Ethical by Rod B. Wentworth (October 1, 2011, vol. 142, no. 10, pages 1199-1200) talks about the ethics involved with dentists advertising “free second opinions.”

In the article it says

“So simply offering free second opinions is not in and of itself unethical. It is perfectly acceptable for a patient to seek a second opinion. In fact, dentists should consider suggesting that their patients obtain second opinions, especially when they have questions or concerns about the appropriateness of the recommended treatment.”

One issue raised in the article is that in a second opinion, if a patient has any x-rays they should be sent along with the patient for the second opinion to avoid unnecessary radiation.

The other issue raised is giving second opinions without making disparaging remarks about the patient’s dentist from the first opinion also known as jousting. Doing so can result in possible disciplinary action against the dentist and may have potential legal implications but as a patient if it was warranted I would like to hear the truth.

The purpose of a free second opinion would of course be to help dentists take patients away from each other.

I think second opinions from different dentists is a good idea in some cases but as addressed in this post http://blog.teethremoval.com/are-dentists-ethical-or-scam-artists/ knowing whether a dentist is being too conservative, too aggressive, or somewhere in the middle is difficult often for patients to know. I tend to think more dentists at least in the U.S. lean towards the aggressive side but certainly some are more conservative in their treatment approaches.

The author ends by saying

“Second opinions are not cut-and-dried in an ethical sense. Advertising them certainly is not unethical, and patients are free to select the dentist of their choice, which they may do on the basis of the information received in a second opinion. However, certain actions, such as criticizing a dentist unjustly, administering unnecessary tests or treatment, or misrepresenting fees, skills or experience may be unethical. Only the dentists involved know their motivation and whether it leads to unethical conduct. One hopes that dentists will take the high road to ensure that the oral health of the public and the welfare of patients are of primary importance”

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Rethink Breast Cancer: Your Man Reminder

Posted on 13. Oct, 2011 by wisdom.

A very interesting video was posted to YoutTube last week to help raise awareness for breast cancer. Several shirtless young men appear to show how to check for lumps in an effort to raise breast cancer awareness for younger women.

This is a Canadian campaign by a charity called Rethink Breast Cancer. http://rethinkbreastcancer.com/

Source: The Sydney Morning Herald. Sacha Molitorisz. Steamy spin sells health message. October 14, 2011. http://www.smh.com.au/business/marketing/steamy-spin-sells-health-message-20111013-1ln0z.html

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Facebook Ads

Posted on 05. Aug, 2008 by wisdom.

Recently, thanks to Visa, I have been advertising on Facebook this site. I was able to receive $100 free worth of advertising on Facebook. This is a pretty large number; however, a lot of people have been having problems achieving results with Facebook Ads. If you found myself through Facebook, thanks for coming!

I created a quick ad in facebook and launched a new campaign. I already had an account, so all I had to do to get the $100 free was to ad the Visa Business Application, check my email, and enter the code under the funding sources in billing.

Since I did not know where to bid I decided to start my biding at a modest $0.26. Immediately I was greeted with a typical message from Facebook Ads. “The bid on your ad may be too low to receive a significant number of impressions. We recommend raising your bid to at least ..”

Well I set my daily budget at $10.00. And guess what, I spent the entire daily budget in less than 5 minutes. With over 60,000 impressions as well. Give me a break Facebook.

Anyways this told me I set my bid too high, so I lowered it to $.24. The next day my budget did not deplete nearly as fast, but it still didn’t take the whole day to spend the $10.00. So I knew I was still too high. The next day I decided to set my bid to $.21. Now I checked back later than evening, the ad had been running the whole day, and I still had not spent my budget, so I increased the bid by a few cents. By the end of the day, the budget had been spent.

What I learned from this, is that is possible to find out the right bid price for the ad you are running. Another tip, is to check the ad again in the early evening. If you still have not reached your budget, increase the bid by a cent or two. Just because Facebook does not allow you to target based on times, does not mean you can not manually do it. A lot more users are on in the evening hours anyways.

This graph shows how lowering my bid, even when Facebook told me it was too high, increased the amount of clicks I got for my budget of $10.00.

I did not bother trying out different ads because impressions may have helped get traffic along with clicks so I was not really concerned with my CTR. However, I did notice that certain states in the U.S. seem to cost a few more cents for the same ad

If you are looking to learn more about Facebook Ads I recommend you check out NeilsWeb and Nicky Cakes.

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Advertising Changes

Posted on 05. Aug, 2008 by wisdom.

I am happy to announce that I am now allowing for advertisers to purchase banner ads on this blog.

There are three options currently available.

1) A 468 x 60 ad at the top of (almost) all blog posts. The current price for this is $25.

2) There are 2, 125 x 125 ads in the right side bar available on the entire blog. There is a price of $25 currently for this.

3) There is a 300 x 250 ad available for purchase at the end of each blog post. The current price for this is $10.

The ads are handled through a WordPress plugin called OIOpublisher. If you are interested in learning more about it or adding it to your blog go here.

Payment for the ads is set on a monthly basis and is done through paypal. All banner ads are currently set at nofollow.

I also added the top commentators plugin, comment luv, and a widget for BlogCatalog to the blog.

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