(originally posted by me at Sg2.com)
Social media continues to be a hotly debated topic in the popular press. Many evangelists believe social media is the best thing since sliced bread. Just look at this Time magazine article on how Twitter is supposedly going to fundamentally change the world we know and how we digest information. Other folks see it as all hype without any real substance, or even worse, too risky to play with now. Case in point: the NFL, as a brand/product protecting policy, just made it clear to players: no tweeting from the sidelines. There’s also a new report basically noting that 80% of Twitter is “all about me.”
Wherever you are at, know this: Many hospitals are quietly utilizing social media tools effectively. Here are 10 success stories grouped into 3 categories: proactive outreach, concierge services and live event coverage. If you read just one, choose number 7.
Proactive Outreach
1. Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center CEO Paul Levy blogs to run a better hospital. Not just for marketing. Truly to get his hospital to run more efficiently and transparently. Rarely will you find a CEO who is such a prolific/transparent writer (and who has such a trusting board). The rest of us benefit from his writing. Of late, we get to join them on their journey into Kaizen (a Japanese philosophy that focuses on continuous lifelong improvement). We get to be a fly on the wall during his dinner with the prostate team (physicians and patients). We read about him addressing the local union trying to unionize the hospital. This Boston magazine quote says it all: “To run a better hospital, this CEO became a better blogger.” Read the whole article to learn about his journey into blogging stardom and, more importantly, change management.
2. Geisinger uses Twitter/Facebook to recruit gastroenterologists. Why not, if 70% of doctors search for jobs online? Successful recruitment of 1 of the 3 doctors is attributed directly to Geisinger’s Facebook page.
3. Lifespan reaches out to patients and family personally through Twitter. Read the description of how it used Twitter to proactively reach out to patients and family who were visiting its hospital. Patients typically have 2 responses: surprise that the hospital is on Twitter and sincere appreciation for its reaching out personally to them.
4. Ob/gyn practice uses Twitter and Facebook (17-page study in PDF format) to educate patients and facilitate patient-to-patient interaction. With an average of only 8 minutes to spend per patient, these doctors wanted a way to provide deeper and richer information to their patients. They also realized that the interaction among patients is important, too.
Concierge Services
5. Scripps uses Twitter to turn angry patients into loyal ones. Its basic approach of “try new things, be nice to people and don’t say anything that our legal department would object to” has yielded “little instances of gratitude that make what we’re doing worthwhile. Raging angry fires put out, people passing around our wellness stories, horrible reviews retracted and replaced with stories of great customer service.”
6. Norman Regional Health System spends 30 minutes a day on Twitter and Facebook. Through these tools, they’ve built a greater partnership with the press. They’ve had happy patients share their stories. And they’ve worked quickly with frustrated patients to get their issues resolved. “We would rather have them cared for in a positive and proactive manner immediately than weeks later as seen with other customer service tools. That’s the gift of social media—immediacy.”
Live Event Coverage
7. Children’s Medical Center in Dallas tweeted about a kidney transplant from a father to his son. Twittering took place at both UT Southwestern Medical Center (where the kidney was removed from the father) and Children’s. According to data from Children’s (reported by Greystone), the results of this single event were as follows: “By the end of the day, Children’s Twitter followers had increased 370%, 40 interviews were scheduled over the following 9 days and more than 600 stories were garnered with more than 60 million impressions. In addition, 20 people contacted Children’s transplant program to request information about becoming an organ donor.”
8. At least 7 hospitals have used Twitter during live surgery. Their stories are embedded in these links. Common goals are both buzz building and patient education:
- St. Luke’s in Cedar Rapids (hysterectomy and uterine prolapse surgery). One hospital spokesman said, “A lot of people would like to go into the operating room and see what happens but don’t want all the visuals and stuff.”
- UNC Hospitals (heart procedure)
- Henry Ford (removal of a cancerous kidney mass). From the article: “Dr Craig Rogers, the lead surgeon in the Henry Ford surgery, said the impetus for his Twittering was to let people know that a tumor can be removed without taking the entire kidney.”
- Sherman Hospital (robot-assisted laparoscopic hysterectomy). During this surgery, 72 followers asked questions on Twitter, mostly related to the da Vinci® Surgical System.
- OSF St Joseph (brain surgery)
- Sinai Hospital in Baltimore (sleeve gastrectomy)
- Methodist University Hospital in Memphis (brain surgery). This one led to 21,000 YouTube views and 3 requests for appointments.
9. South Coast Health System uses Twitter for real-time crisis communication. After a big chemical spill in the neighborhood, 50 people were taken to local hospitals for treatment. Twitter was the perfect tool to stream live and breaking information about status, media reports and number of patients admitted and released.
10. St Jude’s Children’s Research Hospital lets donors and patients tell their story for them. Its Facebook group now has 100,000+ fans. Some recent quotes:
“We can never repay what you have meant to our family.”
“I work at Chili’s and am so proud of the money that we help donate to St Jude’s!”
As you can see, social media has become part of many hospitals’ portfolio of strategies to communicate and engage with patients and stakeholders. While hospitals are usually considered pretty conservative, social media is a little odd in that it’s an investment mostly of time (and interest!), not of capital. One ad exec from world-renowned Ogilvy even thinks hospitals are quietly leading the way with social media. I’m not sure about that, but we’re off to a great start.
Feel free to share your organization’s journey into social media as well.
If you run a dental or medical practice and are looking to acquire new patients through the web, email me at tony at launchyourmovement.com for our various packages.
Other resources:
If you’re interested specifically in how hospitals use social media, register at Sg2.com where I’ve written extensively on the topic and also started a group of 280+ hospital executives interested in the topic.
Physician practices are making use of social media as well: “We started our social media initiatives to gain a greater online presence,” said Marketing Director Kristen Bostedo-Conway. “Now we are expanding our use of the space so that we can be a resource as well as engage in a dialogue with consumers and patients.”
Southeast Anesthesiology Consultants and Southeast Pain Care use Facebook and Twitter to engage with physician groups, hospitals, trade publications, consumers and patients. Southeast Pain Care’s Facebook page has more than 2,000 fans and is growing. Patients and consumers use the space to share personal stories and engage in meaningful dialogue about each other’s experiences. “The page serves as a community for our pain patients,” said Marketing Manager Courtney Buysse.
We tweeted a live surgery two weeks ago at High Point Regional Health System. We used the hashtag #HPRHSLIVE. This was also a proceduring featuring the da Vinci® Surgical System. The surgery was announced only virally on Twitter.
*38 People re-tweeted and commented on the surgery
*14 people started following HPRHS at the start of the surgery, then 15 more by the conclusion.
*Our ranking on Twitter jumped from number 2 million to 934,890 out of 6,736,345 Twitter users (per Twittergrader.com) within the past two weeks and the greatest jump was during the surgery.
Since the live surgery, there have been dozens of inquiries from across the country. Unfortunately, there was no way to track exactly how many people followed the surgery because some people did not click on the links or respond.
Kelley – this is a great example of an effective use of twitter -a real, live event. Thanks also for sharing the trackable metrics!
– Tony
So many physicians are afraid of what is already “out there” about them. Thank you for collecting the cream of the crop to illuminate what is possible. Cheers, D2
[...] Here’s a post that collected 10 Hospital Social Media Success Stories. [...]
On Tuesday, May 4, we’ll be tweeting and webcasting a live colonoscopy here at Mercy Medical Center in Cedar Rapids, IA. From our research, we’re the first hospital to do this live for a preventive, elective procedure. One of our cancer nurses volunteered to do this to educate the public on the importance of getting a colonoscopy, giving new meaning to “practicing what we preach.” We invite all to tune in at http://www.mercycare.org.
I am really impressed with this article. It is great to see Health services embracing and using social media as another positive avenue of communication. The overwhelming concern that I hear from our Health Services is the fear of bad press and who is going to oversee the management of social media for the organisation? Are these real barriers or imagined ones? Thanks for this collection of examples and I will be sharing it with our Health Care services here.
[...] If you weren’t a believer in how social media can inspire, educate, recruit and create loyal ambassadors for your brand you will soon be singing the social media jingle too! For more details, be sure to check out his article, “10 Hospital Social Media Success Stories” [...]
[...] If you weren’t a believer in how social media can inspire, educate, recruit and create loyal ambassadors for your brand, you will soon be singing the social media jingle too! For more details, be sure to check out his article, “10 Hospital Social Media Success Stories” [...]
See what happens when a hospital does not have a social media policy.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GufTuZ3-YRo
[...] are using social media as a new form of telemedicine. According to Tony Chen, in his article 10 Hospital Social Media Success Stories, there are currently seven hospitals reporting using Twitter during live surgery including Sinai [...]
[...] Ten Hospital Social Media Success Stories [...]