Is Social Media an Effective Healthcare Marketing Tool?

Social media is a marketer's campaign fallback. When in doubt, tweet it! Post it! Social media seems like an obvious marketing platform, but it may not be as effective as you  think in the healthcare sector.

Only 4% of healthcare industry leaders reported social media as "very effective" for helping marketing efforts, according to HealthLeaders Industry Survey 2011.The majority of respondents (53%) answered that they were "neutral" on social media's effectiveness.

Maybe it's information overload. Maybe it's a form of A.D.D. Millennials are showing little interest in what marketers have to say via social media. According to a Capstrat poll, more than five of every six respondents said they would not use social media for medical communication if their doctors offered it.

"It appears consumers are willing to move administrative experiences such as bill payment and records access online, but when it comes to conferring with their healthcare providers, people still prefer more traditional communications," said Capstrat President,  Karen Albritton in a media statement.

Many hospitals and healthcare organizations are still figuring out the best ways to use social media to their advantage. Thus far, the only social media guidelines for physicians are from the American Medical Association and were released in November 2010. Here are the highlights which include monitoring:

• Privacy settings to safeguard personal information
• Internet presence to ensure that the personal and professional information personal sites and content posted about them by others, is accurate and appropriate.
• Appropriate boundaries of the patient-physician relationship when interacting with patients online to ensure patient privacy and confidentiality are maintained.
• Separation of personal and professional content online.
• Online actions---Recognize that and content posted can negatively affect their reputations among patients and colleagues, and may even have consequences for their medical careers.

The guidelines are basic, to say the least. In my research, I've come across two extreme cases of social media use: One with profoundly positive consequences…and one with profoundly negative consequences.

Emory Healthcare: Twitter as 9-1-1

At 11:06 a.m. on April 25^th, Matthew Browning sent a tweet to Emory Healthcare: "@emoryhealthcare NEED HELP NOW!! Grandma w/ RUPTURED AORTA needs Card Surgeon/OR ASAP, STAT! can you accept LifeFlight NOW!!?"

Browning's grandmother was critically ill and in an area of rural south Georgia, far from the care she needed immediately. Local hospitals were not equipped to handle a patient with her complex needs, and Browning turned to social media to send out his distress call.

"While much of our social media is proactive and conversational, when we receive a tweet like Matthew's, everything changes. We must immediately throw out the process flowcharts, remove all barriers, and act," says Morgan Griffith, Emory Healthcare social media specialist on Emory's blog. "Instantaneously, things shift into high gear and a number of contacts in a variety of departments are contacted to get the right information as quickly as possible."

Browning's tweet has opened the idea of patients using Twitter as the new 9-1-1. Emory Healthcare responded back with the Tweet: "@MatthewBrowning Matthew, please either call 911 or have your grandma's doctor call our transfer service to get immediate help: 404-686-8334"

Browning's situation allowed Emory to question its existing policy and open the discussion of the effectiveness of their response.  Before the incident Emory's social media policy was the following:

1)      Evaluate a need for response

3)      Continue dialog offline

4)      Identify common complaints

After the incident, social media experts at Emory reevaluated their social media policy to target some key questions and areas for improvement:

• What if someone exposes their personal information to us in a public arena such as Twitter?
• What if we aren't careful and diligent in our response, could we further compromise that person's privacy?
• What if we can't help?
• What if we don't respond? But most importantly, what if we do?

Since the incident, Emory Healthcare has worked out a list of emergency numbers for urgent situations. They are working to address these "what ifs" to improve process efficiency in social media communication.

"We also know with certainty that without Twitter on April 25, 2011, a family would have felt more hopeless and helpless than they already did. They would have had one less avenue through which to gain answers and options," adds Griffith.

One HealthLeaders story that has been gaining traction with our readers centers on a Rhode Island physician fined $500 for posting online about work experiences. The emergency department physician at Westerly Hospital was terminated after the incident.

The hospital board determined that she had "used her Facebook account inappropriately to communicate a few of her clinical experience at the hospital's emergency department."

Apparently, there is still much confusion in the healthcare world surrounding the appropriate use of social media, especially with regards to patient privacy.

According to a social media and compliance survey from the Health Care Compliance Association (HCCA) & the Society of Corporate Compliance and Ethics (SCCE):

• 42% of respondents reported that their organization has had to discipline an employee for behavior on social media sites (up from 24% in 2009)
• Increased incidents has not been matched with increasingly systematic approaches to monitoring compliance
• A gap exists between policies and adequate procedures, posing a significant risk

"Widespread market awareness of monitoring tools is a long way off," survey researchers write. "And even the best of tools have difficulty capturing private conversations using these sites…No matter what model policy a workshop designed, procedures for enforcing the policy were difficult to identify."

This is scary. Healthcare marketers need to develop a social media policy that works for them. Hopefully the two stories of Emory Healthcare and Westerly Hospital have provided a few lessons learned.

My advice? Looks like staff education plays a huge role in the effective use of social media. Are they prepared to address emergency situations via Twitter? Do they know what information violates HIPAA?

It's about time for some heavier regulation on social media use. One fact is certain: Creating a strong social media policy and sticking to it is easier said than done.

For a checklist regarding social media policies for your organization, click here.