Is Social Media the “Road to Nowhere” for Hospitals?

By Jenn Riggle

Photo courtesy of Kenneth Hynek

It can be if you don’t know where you’re going.

And according to new research from Greystone.Net, this seems to be the case — only 1 in 3 hospitals have a social media plan.

I’m not quite convinced of the accuracy of this research, which reports that 9 in 10 hospitals/health systems are currently using some form of social media. While I love the idea that so many hospitals are using social media, Greystone.Net’s percentage of engaged hospitals seems overly optimistic. According to Ed Bennett, whose blog provides an ongoing list of hospitals engaged in social media, 540 hospitals, or 10 percent of the nation’s 5,010 community hospitals, are currently using social media in some form or another.

However, the fact that only 33 percent of hospitals (and again, I think this number is high) have a social media plan is problematic, since these efforts are not tied to strategy or to hospital marketing and business plans. In fact, I hazard to guess that many hospitals are simply setting up Twitter accounts, posting videos on YouTube and creating Facebook pages without thinking how they can use these tools to support their service lines and improve communication with the community they serve.

To take the analogy further (with the help of Former Vice President Al Gore) hospitals are simply traveling down the information superhighway without a road map. Not knowing where they’re going, it’s highly unlikely they’ll arrive at their destination. Chances are, they’ll get lost.

Greystone.Net’s research also shows that hospitals have not budgeted for social media projects or hired employees to manage these programs. This could be a recipe for failure, since social media efforts are time intensive efforts that require research and engagement – and without resources, these duties fall on the health system’s PR and Marketing Team, who are already strapped dealing with the day-to-day activities of the hospital.

So I thought I’d take a quick look at two health systems of different sizes and resources which have taken systematic approaches to harnessing social media and have had tremendous results:

1.  Aurora Health Care, a 13-hospital integrated delivery network in Milwaukee, Wis., has mastered Twitter. The health system has more than 6,000 Twitter followers (@Aurora_Health), when many other hospitals have hundreds. One reason Aurora Health has been so successful is that it understands that social media is not a broadcasting tool, but instead, is about conversation. Research shows that nearly 20 percent of Aurora’s tweets or posts are conversational in nature.

In addition, Aurora Health “live-tweeted” during a double-knee replacement surgery to help promote its orthopedics service line. As a result, not only did the number of its followers increase from 900 to 2,000 and it generated a national media placement on ABC’s “Good Morning America,” but it also received 20 inquiries about knee surgery, 14 who actually had the surgery performed.

2.  On the other end of the spectrum, Sarasota Memorial Health Care System, a small Florida health system, doesn’t have a huge marketing team, but it has done a great job with social media. John Domansky, a healthcare consultant and blogger from Iowa, ranked the hospital as a “Best Practice” social hospital for its engaging Twitter account, easy to navigate Web site and active Facebook page. In fact, according to an article in the Tampa Bay Medical News, Facebook drives 4,000 people, or 5 percent, of Sarasota Memorial’s monthly Web traffic. This comes just after the Web site address and search engine traffic.

Social media holds great promise, but hospitals need to allocate resources and integrate social media efforts with their existing marketing and business plans.

Two-thirds of hospitals don’t have a social media plan. The question they need to ask themselves: Do we feel lucky?