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By Jessica Reiner
SOCIALLY CONNECTING
HOSPITALS, PATIENTS, AND
COMMUNITIES
1
SOCIALLY CONNECTING HOSPITALS,
PATIENTS, AND COMMUNITIES Introduction………………………………………………………………………………2-3
Hospital Public Relations………………………………………………………………….3
Risks, Rules and Regulations…………………………………………………………..3-5
What to do in a Crisis……………………………………………………………………5-6
The Platforms:
Facebook………………………………………………………………………………..7-11
Twitter……………………………………………………………………………………12-14
Competitive Analysis and Other Platforms………………………………………16-19
How to use Social Media to Fundraise……………………………………………19-20
Community Awareness and Gaining New Patients, Volunteers, and
Employees………………………………………………………………………………21-22
Monitoring…………………………………………………………………………………...22
Author Bio…..………………………………………………………………………………..23
References……………………………………………………………………………….24-25
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INTRODUCTION
This is a guide on how hospitals can use social media to their best possible
ability. It was found in a study conducted by Andrew Perrin for the Pew
Research Center, sixty five percent of adults in the United States are using social
media. Social Media can benefit organizations by having the audience engage
and communicate market insights and disseminate information (Richter, J.P.,
Muhlestein, 2015 D.B, C.A, P. 449). Based on studies, hospitals are not using social
media to its full potential.
Information on Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, LinkedIn, and YouTube in the
healthcare field were researched, and the good and bad platforms for hospitals
were analyzed. Laws and regulations, mainly HIPPAA laws are also explained
and this guide will teach the ways to follow them as well as what to do in a crisis.
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Hospitals can use social media to spread awareness, gain more customers
and patients, fundraise, list employee and volunteer opportunities, and to
highlight great employees and volunteers. This guide will explain how to
properly create posts, and it will also show how to monitor all the platforms and
stay up on everything.
HOSPITAL PUBLIC RELATIONS
The Public Relations Association of America defines public relations as, “a
strategic communication process that builds mutually beneficial relationships
between organizations and their publics.”
People who work in public relations for hospitals are in charge of dealing
with external and internal communications for the hospital or healthcare system.
Responsibilities include pitching and writing news releases to media outlets and
journalists, answering media inquiries, providing media with accurate and timely
information on news, social media, creating material to promote the hospital
and its services, and planning events. Social media is involved in public relations
and marketing, community relations, and fundraising. According to the Public
Relations Association of America, public relations specialists must be highly
organized and be prepared to deal with a variety of situations.
RISKS, RULES AND REGULATIONS
All health care organizations in the United States are covered under the
Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act (HIPAA). With HIPAA, all of a
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patients’ health and personal information is to be remained protected. Before
posting any information, pictures, or videos online about any patient, you must
ask them for permission first and have proof of their consent. According to the
U.S. Department of Health and Human services, information, which must be
protected, includes what your doctors, nurses, and other health care providers
put in your medical record, conversations between doctors and nurses about
care and treatments, information from health insurers, and billing information.
Therefore, hospital physicians and staff must be careful when using social
media for professional as well as personal use. A survey of over 4,000 physicians
conducted by the physician social network website, QuantiaMD found that
over 90 percent of physicians use some sort of social media for personal use,
whereas only 65 percent use them for professional use. The numbers are growing
though; therefore an internal social media policy must be implemented for all
hospital physicians and staff. An example of an effective policy, which all
hospitals should have, can be found on the next page.
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(Retrieved from Symplur.com)
Even though, it may not diminish the chance of having rules violated, a
social media policy must be implemented to allow the hospital to be as
proactive and safe as they can be. Also, all social media accounts must be
monitored on a regular basis to make sure that no laws are being violated and
that the hospital is not receiving bad press.
WHAT TO DO IN A CRISIS
With social media, information, comments, pictures, and videos can be posted
quickly, and sometimes carelessly. Some posts, pictures, or Tweets can be
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offensive to people or the hospitals’ reputation. For instance, if someone posts a
picture of a doctor at a hospital doing something inappropriate, it can severely
harm the hospitals reputation. To help navigate a crisis online, the first step is to
create a team for and a designated email address for social media and a
support page for users. Second, if someone posts in anger to one of your
channels, do not answer back nastily. Ask them for their contact information, or
give them yours, so you can speak to them privately. Also, make sure HIPAA
rules are never violated. Pay attention and delete any posts that are violating
laws. Always be active and monitor all accounts and plan ahead (Regunberg
2015).
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THE PLATFORMS
(Retrieved from
https://us.accion.org/sites/default/files/whysocialmedia_infographic.jpg)
When most people over 18 years old think of social media, Facebook is
one of the first platforms that comes to their minds. According to Facebook,
they have 1.04 billion daily active users on average and 1.59 billion monthly
active users. With Facebook users, organizations, and companies have profiles
and fan pages. Comments and statuses can be made, pictures and videos can
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be uploaded, and businesses, brands, and organizations can be rated. Users
also interact with each other and tend to link their other social media accounts,
like Instagram and Twitter, to it as well. Hospitals primarily use Facebook for
consumption activities that follow a strategy of dissemination. “Much of the
current hospital social media use is for educational purposes to inform
consumers,” according to the study, “Hospitals ‘Current and Future Use of Social
Media, in the Journal of Healthcare Management.
Many hospitals are effectively using social media, such as Hackensack
University Medical Center in Hackensack, New Jersey and The Children’s
Hospital in Boston. For National Donate Life Month, which raises awareness
about becoming an organ donor, Hackensack University Medical Center
posted using the hashtag, #DonateLife. The Children’s Hospital in Boston has an
excellent, popular Facebook page. They put up interesting information, and
have photos of the week with inspiring stories featuring their patients. They also
have a #BostonChildrens story hashtag and section where families of the
patients can share a photo or testimonial on Twitter or Instagram, and the
pictures come up in a section on the Facebook page.
According to a 2013 study conducted by The Journal of Medical Quality,
hospitals with more Facebook “likes” also have lower rates of mortality. The
authors compared the amount of “likes” on pages of 40 hospitals in the New
York City area. They found that online popularity coincided with how likely
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people responded, “Yes, they would definitely recommend the hospital,” in
patient satisfaction surveys. Each percentage point of a decrease in a hospital’s
30-day mortality rate corresponded with the hospital’s page having an average
of over 97 Facebook likes (Abrams, 2013). Although those are good statistics,
with all the users on Facebook, that is not a huge amount. Therefore, a good
Facebook page is vital to see patient engagement and satisfaction. Below are
my guidelines for the proper use of Facebook in hospitals:
RULES FOR FACEBOOK
1. Information must be accurate, and true.
2. Include a Picture, video, and or hashtag with every post
3. Post at least twice a week
4. Reply every day to as many posts as possible, and give information
to call or privately message for posts about problems or complaints.
5. Get people involved by having challenges, campaigns, asking
questions, and giving rewards.
6. Stay on top of your game with health facts and advice from
medical professionals. For example, in the winter post information
on fighting the common cold and how to protect yourself from
getting it and helpful remedies.
7. Include links to notable research found and include FAQs.
Examine examples below taken from Hackensack University
Medical Center and Boston Children’s Hospital’s Facebook pages:
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(Retrieved from Hackensack University Medical Center’s Facebook)
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#BostonChildrens
(Retrieved from The Boston Children’s Hospital’s Facebook Page)
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For quick information, interesting facts, and news that gets right to the
point, Twitter is an excellent platform. Twitter is a social media platform where
people create short blurbs of information called, “Tweets,” which can only have
up to 140 characters and can have one picture attached. Characters include
all letters, numbers, and punctuation. A link can be included, and each letter,
number and punctuation that makes up the link is included in the characters. To
shorten links, so that they use less characters you can use Bit.ly.com, a free link
shortening website. Words, names, or phrases with the number sign in front of
them are called Hashtags, which, when clicked go to a page with all Tweets
with the same hashtags are used, and began on Twitter. With Tweets that they
like or dislike, anyone can reply, retweet, or favorite.
Many people have the Twitter application on their smartphones, where
they get alerted about organizations, brands, and the tweets and interactions of
people they follow. Based on a January 2016 article featured in Hospital &
Health Network Magazine’s website, American hospitals receive about 43
Tweets a year related to the patient experience. Patients tend to use this
platform often to share feedback on the healthcare that they receive, whether
it be good or bad. For instance, Jane Doe can tweet to St. Joseph’s Hospital,
“Thank you to all the Doctors, nurses, and Staff @SJWH for taking great care of
my daughter when she broke her foot.” Also, healthy tips and recipes,
information on new doctors and staff, and news can also be tweeted.
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In a 2015 study, conducted in The International Journal for Healthcare
Improvement, out of 4,679 hospitals identified, a little over 50 percent had an
account on Twitter; this included data from 1,609 Twitter handles (many hospitals
within a provider network share the same Twitter handle). During the one year
study period, they found 404,065 total tweets directed towards these hospitals
(data from 1418 Twitter handles, representing 2,137 hospitals); of these, 369,197
(91.4%) were original tweets (data from 1,417 Twitter handles, representing 2136
hospitals). The classifier tagged 34,725 (9.4%) original tweets relating to patient
experiences and 334 472 (90.6%) relating to other aspects of the hospital. Patient
experience tweets were found for 1,065 Twitter handles, representing 1,726
hospitals (36.9%) (Hawkins, 2015. P.1). Many organizations also have live chats on
Twitter. These statistics show how Twitter is being harnessed by hospitals to drive
traffic.
Professor Anne Barretta, Communications Professor at William Paterson
University and Ramapo College, created a cheat sheet for Twitter Etiquette,
“The C’s and R’s of Twitter.” According to Professor Barretta, the C’s are
credibility, consistency, correctly, creatively, and the R’s are relevancy,
reactivity, responsibility, respectfully, and reliability. For credibility, you must
include a link to an authoritative source that you used to get information for your
Tweet. She advises that one should not simply use opinion all the time. For
consistency, Tweet often and always make sure you are posting out correct
information. Be creative, make sure your tweets are different from the rest and
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make sure they stand out. Also, she advises to use relevant hashtags and do not
make the hashtags full sentences. Based on Professor Ann Baretta’s, “The C’s
and R’s of Twitter” and Adweek’s “Tweet Smarter, Not Harder” infographic, here
is an example of a well-developed Tweet:
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(Retrieved from Adweek.com)
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COMPETITIVE ANALYSIS AND TRENDS WITH OTHER PLATFORMS
Hospitals that are nonprofits in urban areas, affiliated with a healthcare
system, and teaching hospitals are more likely to use social media. Therefore,
hospitals in suburban and rural areas are less likely to use social media,
according to the study, “Hospitals ‘Current and Future Use of Social Media,” in
the Journal of Healthcare Management. Also, a lot of the current social media
use from hospitals is for education purposes to inform customers, potential
patients, donors, and people in the community.
Besides Facebook and Twitter, LinkedIn, Instagram and YouTube can also
be utilized. LinkedIn is basically the Facebook for professional networking. It is a
professional social network that people go on to network for careers, look for
jobs and education opportunities, find employers and employees, and learn
about different companies and organizations. Instagram is platform where
people and organizations pictures and short videos and they post less often. On
Instagram, different filters can be used to alter your pictures and videos, and
you also use hashtags. It also can be linked to the Facebook or Twitter page.
YouTube is a platform just for videos. All posts from these platforms can be
linked to another social media platforms too.
LinkedIn is not used for personal lives. Hospitals can use it for recruitment,
to showcase different departments, and as a publishing platform. It also can be
used to promote events. An exceptional example of a well-developed page is
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the page of the Cleveland Clinic, a nonprofit medical center with hospital and
clinical care in Cleveland, Ohio. It has over 90,000 followers. The medical center
puts educational content on their page regularly and they have showcase
pages for each department. Also, it includes a descriptive summary.
Instagram is a platform for visual content including pictures and videos. It
has over 100 million users. Like Twitter and Facebook, hashtags are also used.
With a photo or video, a caption is usually added with a hashtag, driving users
to comment and like the posts more. In an article published by Ragen’s
Healthcare Communication News, hospitals or health brands can use Instagram
by showing photos of staff or brand ambassadors, sharing sneak peek photos,
such as photos of new technologies in the hospital, event photos and invites,
motivational pictures and tips on health and wellness, and comical or creative
displays of a product or service. New York Presbyterian Hospital has over 5,000
Instagram followers. They post pictures of patient success stories, staff, health tips
and facts, community events, and volunteers. A recent post from them included
a picture of a baby patient who is recovering from skull surgery dressed in an Evil
Knievel costume. The post received 447 likes. As mentioned, Boston Children’s
Hospital also uses Instagram, and they have a campaign, “#Boston’s Children,”
on which all pictures are linked to their Facebook page.
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(Retrieved from New York Presbyterian Hospital’s Instagram)
(Retrieved from Boston Children’s Hospital Instagram)
YouTube is a platform where videos can be uploaded for the whole world
to see. It is beneficial to include videos of medical professionals giving tips and
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advice, patient success stories, community contributions, and demonstrating
medical procedures. Different branches of the hospital can also be showcased.
For example, on April 2, 2015, Mt. Sinai Hospital in New York City, uploaded a
feature of Dr. Dr. Joshua Rosenberg of the Division of Facial Plastic and
Reconstructive Surgery giving an overview of services offered. The video
includes the doctor explaining the service and patient before and after photos.
FUNDRAISING
Hospitals can raise funds by posting to social media platforms showcasing
improvements and what the donations help with, services and equipment
needed, and giving thanks to past donors. Children's Hospital Los Angeles and
Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center both estimated that millions of dollars in
additional revenue were gained as a result of social networking efforts from
posting patient success stories (Wagner, 2010). Recently, for Easter, the
Children’s Hospital Los Angeles posted to Facebook and Twitter thanking Wells
Fargo Bank for donating baskets to the children in the hospital, which included a
picture of a patient with two volunteers. During March, the hospital had a
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campaign using the hashtag, #MakeMarchMatter and the goal was to raise
one million dollars to support the children and its programs. The goal was
exceeded! During March, the hospital posted and tweeted different posts
about donations, progress, advertisements for family events, and saying thanks.
According to a Virginia marketing agency, Reed and Associates
Marketing, three of the best practices for fundraising through the use of social
media are:
1. Social Media Engagement is crucial. Create relationships with followers
by listening to what they are saying and responding in a timely matter,
even if the answer is just a “thank you,” “yes,” or “no.” Get
conversations going between the followers, so more people retweet,
share, like, and comment on the post.
2. Sharing the impact makes it relatable. Show donors and potential
donors what their donations are going towards and have helped
purchase, treat, update or create. Also, highlight the impact of
volunteers and make sure to thank them and show how others can
help.
3. Include a-call- to- action. Let the audience know when help or
awareness is needed. When asking for donations, make sure to include
steps on how to donate or a link to make a direct donation online for
easier access.
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COMMUNITY AWARENESS AND GAINING NEW PATIENTS, CUSTOMERS,
VOLUNTEERS AND EMPLOYEES
Besides treating patients and making sure they are in good health, it is
important to raise awareness of different health conditions, get the community
informed of what the hospital is offering, maintain relationships, and highlight
and attract volunteers and prospective and current employees. In order to
have engaging posts on Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, and Instagram, follow
these tips:
1. Maintain a calendar of posts to be timely. For example, October is
Breast Cancer Awareness month, so in October, it is the time for the
Breast Cancer Awareness posts. Make sure to still reply to all questions
asked and to keep up with current trends and issues.
2. Act like a real person. Always, respond to peoples posts within a day,
and if you do not have an answer on hand, give them the contact
information for who to contact or a link to a trusted source. For
instance, if Sally Tweets the hospital asking about if she should give
birth naturally, Tweet her back, thanking her for reaching out, but tell
her to contact the maternity center, and give her the phone number,
email address, or link to their webpage.
3. Include Pictures, Videos, and/or info graphs in almost all posts.
4. Always, always, always ask for permission before posting pictures,
videos, or quotes from anyone, including patients, staff, physicians,
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visitors, donors, and volunteers. If you do not ask for permission, there is
a chance of violating HIPPAA rules.
5. Include tips and videos from physicians.
6. Include Patient testimonials.
7. For all community events, post them before and after on all accounts.
8. Make sure posts are eye catching and interesting.
9. Create a certain Hashtag to use on all accounts, for each hospital
event, distinct ones for campaigns, and for live Tweets and Q&As.
10. Have a designated person to live Tweet and post to Facebook and
Instagram during events.
MONITORING
In order to have posts up timely and to keep up with the audience, it is
key to monitor all accounts. Create a social media calendar to schedule posts
for planned events, campaigns, awareness months, and staff, physician, and
volunteer posts. I highly suggest using HootSuite, a paid software. With this
software, up to 100 posts can be scheduled at a time, and up to a 100 different
accounts can be managed and monitored. Analytics can also be managed, so
you know who to target posts to and what to keep posting, and what you
should not post.
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ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Jessica Reiner is an emerging communication professional. She will be
graduating William Paterson University in May 2016 with a Bachelors in communications
and a concentration in public relations. During college, Jessica was a public relations
assistant in the University’s Marketing and Public Relations Office and an intern at St.
Joseph’s Wayne Hospital Foundation. Also, she was involved in the Student Public
Relations Association (SPRA), where she served as PR Director, Lambda Pi Eta-
Communications Honor Society, and was a Mentee in the Pesce Family Mentoring
Program.
Jessica created this guide as her capstone project, which is a final project that
all William Paterson communications students need complete in order to graduate. She
chose this topic because she interned with the Foundation at St. Joseph’s Wayne
Hospital, and she learned a lot about public relations, fundraising, event planning, and
marketing. She realized how they were not utilizing social media to its fullest potential,
and she would love to create a way to show them how they can.
Jessica aspires to work in public relations, marketing, or sales in the health or
wellness industry after she graduates.
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