Get Social (Media)

Published by: Maya Linson on 4/6/2010 10:42:50 AM

Everyone hears about it, many people scoff at it, some people just can’t live without it: Twitter. About 30 of our members have hospital accounts with handles like @WestchesterMed and @Parklandhealth.

Hospitals are turning to social media (Twitter, Facebook. YouTube, etc.) to better connect with patients, staff and the larger community. The benefits range from addressing customer service issues to better communicating with reporters to promoting accolades that the public may otherwise have missed.

As the social media guru for NAPH, I spend a lot of time scanning our member Twitter posts and I have noticed some really great work. A lot of these accounts provide helpful consumer information, link to useful news articles, point users to touching patient stories and link to parts of hospital web sites that users may not have found on their own.

Each hospital’s social media strategy can vary – but it is essential that such a strategy emphasize these main points:

  • Link to content other than your own. This builds trust among users and positions you as a curator of useful content. So the next time someone wants to learn about a health topic that hundreds of news outlets are covering, they will turn to you to read the one story you have selected as most worthy of sharing.
  • Invite people to share and participate in the conversation. Listen to what people have to say about your organization and the things you post on social media. This enables you to (promptly) answer patients’ concerns directly and better understand their perspective. Then take it a step further and actually implement ideas from the community!
  • Have personality. No one trusts a robot. Make sure your posts have a bit of human nature to them! This can include humor, commentary and emotion. One of the best ways to engage the public is to play on what people love – babies! Miracle patient stories! Tales of triumph! Use social media as a platform for building relationships, not just posting links.

Still have questions? Take some advice from a fellow member: Ryan Square at OSUMC was recently profiled in a blog by Ed Bennett, director of web strategy at the University of Maryland Medical System who also has taken the time to track hospitals’ use of social networks. In this interview, Squire discusses the strategy employed by OSUMC including its goals, attempts to measure ROI and success stories via social media. You can also participate in Bennett’s new “Social Media and the Hospital Workforce ListServ.”

For more information, feel free to contact me directly or check out NAPH’s social media: Twitter, Facebook, YouTube, Flickr.

My parting words – just try it out. Sign up, give it a whirl, ask questions later!

Comments (6)

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  • Great post and glad to see you started a blog! We are definitely fans of social media here at Contra Costa Health Services and our Regional Medical Center. We have found Twitter and Facebook to be very useful in getting out info in emergencies (H1N1) and to highlight achievements. Several of our Regional Medical Center docs volunteereed to help in Haiti and we used our Facebook page to post their pictures and updates. Our cancer treatment program just received an award and we linked to the media coverage on our Facebook so it's a great way to share good news. We have kept our Facebook page open to allow anyone to start a post and I'm wondering what others are doing? Another issue for others is employee access to Facebook and YouTube at work. Thoughts?
    -Kate Fowlie, CCHS Communications Officer

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  • 4/7/2010 8:08:16 PM
  • Thanks for the thoughtful comment, Katie! There are certainly challenges with allowing employees access to social media at work ... curious to hear what other members think/do! I did come across this recent post from the Harvard Business Review that said: "Employees not only appreciate companies that allow them to check Facebook at work, but they also use social media to connect with colleagues, improve communication, and speed up decision making processes — all of which helps them engage with their work and the organization." Social media really is about building relationships, so enabling employees to maintain relationships in person while at work should be as importnat as via their smartphones ...

    --Maya Linson, NAPH Communications Specialist

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  • 4/8/2010 12:13:52 PM
  • Thanks so much for mentioning our twitter handle in your post!

    At Parkland, we use social media to communicate with our patients, employees, stakeholders, media, retirees and anyone who is interested in what we do, but in a different tone than our usual corporate communications.

    Our Facebook (http://www.facebook.com/Parkland) and Twitter (http://twitter.com/parklandhealth) pages allow us to create a sense of community, in an online forum, among patients, employees, donors and other supporters of Parkland. Communication is more conversational with social media and it allows us to move past the "corporate" message and simply share with others how we are just people caring for other people.

    Common topics shared include heartfelt patient stories, staff achievements, health education, upcoming events and letters from our staff. In particular, it's become a sounding board for patients and employees to share with others why they are thankful for Parkland and its staff.


    In addition, Twitter and Facebook are an immediate way to push out information during a crisis, disaster or event of major media interest.

    Anyone can leave a comment for us and we try to get back to them as quickly as possible. The comments and posts so far have been positive and our fans on Facebook are genuinely interested in what we're doing.

    Charise Thomason
    Media Specialist
    Parkland Health & Hospital System

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  • 4/8/2010 12:26:36 PM
  • Nice post! $0$0 $0 $0As far as opening up social media portals to employees, we've only begun the process here at Boston Medical Center. I work in the development office and we're one of the few departments in the hospital to have full access to social media platforms.$0 $0$0 $0 $0There are a lot concerns about employees using these sites, but I think there is general acceptance here that one day we will have and want an open environment. We just want to have the policies and procedures in place before we open up the gates!$0 $0$0 $0 $0Two things I've suggested is first, piloting social media access in more departments so we can achieve a certain level of social media comfort in key areas. Second, I've offered to train people across the institution in one platform like Twitter, which can be updated from a smartphone and doesn't require that we give employees access to the site on their desktops.$0 $0$0 $0 $0While the second option may seem half-hearted, I think hospitals need to realize that if they have restrictions they will soon be moot because of the dominance of mobile devices. In short, people will bypass their blocked desktops and hospitals need to learn to deal with social networks now.$0 $0$0 $0

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  • 4/8/2010 1:39:38 PM
  • Thanks for the mention in the post.  Kate, there are lots of ways to handle employees using social media, but I think following the advice from the quoted Harvard Business Review article is best.  But before you do anything, get together people from your legal, HR, communications, and IT departments as well as nursing and physicians groups to discuss a policy that makes sense for your business goals. 

    Because (fortunately or unfortunately) we are very policy driven in health care, a policy makes sense.  Two reasons: first, policy protects the people and should give them a map on what they can and cannot do while at work.  Really, this should be about the separation of their personal profile and their abiltiy to speak on behalf of your organization.  Once you make that separation, you can begin choosing people who speak on behalf of the organization.  That brings the second reason, the institution is protect (a bit) if a person, using their personal account, releases PHI.  In that case, the employee can be held personally responsible.  Also referenced in the article is Ed Bennett's blog.  On his blog, he's also keeping a list of health care organizations with policies... you can check there for some good templates.

    A culture of personal responsibility is so important to the success of using social media inside your hospital, so ask yourself if that culture exists.  If not, best to start there. 
    Ryan Squire
    Program Director Digital/Social Media
    Ohio State University Medical Center

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  • 4/27/2010 3:37:53 PM
  • To Ryan and the others who commented:
    Great advice, thank you! One of the first things we did was create a social media policy regarding use of social media as an official rep of CCHS. The issue we are still grappling with is staff access to social media from our network and the idea of blocking some from accessing these sites while at work. I am of the mind that employees should be able to access the information we post via social media just as the public can but I know there are some security and other issues. I know this is a hot topic for many of us.
    Kate Fowlie
    Communications Officer
    Contra Costa Health Services

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  • 4/30/2010 7:32:41 PM