Running a hospital is expensive. Expect to see more advertising from them

If you live in Toronto, you may have heard University Health Network (UHN) bragging on the radio about being the top hospital in Canada for the eighth year in a row, according to Newsweek’s rankings at least. 

Like most of us, you might tune out ads — though maybe there’s some part of you that realizes it’s a little unusual to hear a hospital give itself a pat on the back.

But marketing experts and health-care executives say to expect more advertising like this in Canada, something that’s already prominent in the U.S. 

The reason? People are living longer and have more complex medical needs, meaning hospitals are raising money in order to attract top-tier professionals and afford the latest equipment in diagnostics and treatment. 

An MRI scanner, for example, costs anywhere from $200,000 for a refurbished machine to millions for the latest models that provide the highest details in imaging. In Ontario, the province allocated $20 million in 2022 to cover the operating costs of 27 new MRI scanners, but buying those machines fell to the hospitals. 

“If they don’t continue to stand out and attract donor dollars, then they’re going to lack in all of those ways that they’re able to innovate and grow,” health communications specialist Melissa K. Blair told White Coat, Black Art in a recent interview.

Then there’s the other target: potential employees. Canadian hospitals, especially rural ones, are chronically shuttering emergency rooms due to staffing shortages. Between 2022 and 2024, 38 Ontario hospitals or urgent care centres had to close their emergency rooms for a collective 66,000 hours.

And there’s always competition for specialists.

WATCH | UHN #2 Hospital in the World:

It’s why UHN launched Canada Leads, a program aimed at attracting international health-care professionals alongside its general campaign, UHNITED, its president and CEO Kevin Smith said. 

Since the launch of Canada Leads in 2024, UHN has received 725 applications from more than 30 countries, hiring 71 researchers, scientists and clinician-scientists so far.

“We’ve seen an unbelievable increase in the number of people who are interested in coming to Canada, particularly in some areas like virology,” he said. 

The program has raised roughly $54 million to date, according to UHN.

Advertising as community-building

In Scarborough, they’ve taken a different approach, focusing on the hospital system’s underdog status with the Love, Scarborough campaign, something that resonates with community sentiment.

“The whole community kind of feels like they’re forgotten about,” said Kyla Tymchen, who worked in marketing and communications at the Scarborough Health Foundation when the campaign was conceived. “So to finally have something like [the] Love, Scarborough [campaign] that comes out and speaks to them and gives them a voice, I think was really refreshing.”

It also shows how hospitals can combine fundraising and community-building, Blair said. 

Since the campaign launched in 2022, commercials have highlighted how Scarborough’s hospitals “have been forced to do more with less.” Online, pictures of doctors and nurses — “the faces of health care” — share why they keep showing up for patients, despite the challenges of being the underdog.  

WATCH | Love, Scarborough:

The campaign has raised $200 million as of December 2025 and prompted a renewed sense of pride in the Scarborough community, said Tymchen.

The UHNited campaign takes a similar documentary-style approach, using real patients and staff to tell its stories. 

Smith said the ads are not just about raising money but recognizing the extraordinary work of nurses, doctors and staff — often in situations that challenge them. 

“People on the front line aren’t feeling the love every day. We have more violence in our emergency rooms than ever in our careers,” he said. “It was equally important for this to be motivating, inspiring and uplifting to the people who do the work, as well as the people who we are privileged to work on or with.”

‘Not as humble’

Heelis says even smaller hospitals can lean into community-centric, authentic advertising

“I also personally love it when they’re maybe not as humble as we normally are as Canadians,” she said. “We should be proud that we have some of the best institutions in the world.”

And UHN heralding its No. 1 status isn’t meant to throw shade at other hospitals, its CEO and president said. In fact, Smith said he hopes the investments the Toronto hospital system has made in AI and virtual care can offer benefits across the country.

“I wanna be able to say [that] UHN can support a small hospital in Northern Ontario or an Indigenous population — to be able bring them the same standard of care that a patient on University Avenue gets,” he said.