Questions? Comments? Story ideas? Anna Webster, Online Content Coordinator for HealthLeaders Media, can be reached at awebster@hcpro.com. Follow Anna Webster on Twitter
Can humor be used to address serious healthcare problems? Many ads and marketing campaigns for healthcare services tend to take the safe (and more serious) route when discussing the quality or reliability of an organization. But some healthcare marketers are walking the line between funny "haha" and the type of funny that raises eyebrows.
Mixing healthcare and humor can be a risk – is it one that pays off?
HealthLeaders recently featured a campaign spotlightcentering on a marketing campaign from Blue Cross Blue Shield of North Carolina. The BCBSNC website, features goats dressed in shirts with the tag line, "let's stop looking for scapegoats" in reference to escalating healthcare costs.
"If we're going to make a difference and address out-of-control costs, we have to start somewhere. The campaign we've launched featuring the scapegoats was a way for us to do that," said Kathy Higgins, VP of Corporate Affairs for BCBSNC, in response to a blog critique of the website.
My question: is Blue Cross making light of the situation of rising medical costs? The point of the website is that everyone (consumers, doctors, hospitals, and insurers) can be seen as a scapegoat – we are all in the same boat and thus no one should be offended. This type of satire works well on shows like Family Guy but in healthcare, it's less common and may ruffle a few feathers.
Using farm animals could be taking the point past humor and toward mockery.
BCBSNC doesn't see it that way. "We used goats to emphasize that no one group is to blame, but to make it clear that everyone, including us, has a role to play," added Higgins. "The humor in these ads helps us make our point and address the complexity of the issue, but we are serious about the need to control medical costs."
I applaud BCBSNC for starting the conversation and looking for solutions to an escalating problem. The payoff for Blue Cross may be measured in audience participation on the website. Site visitors may post questions and receive answers from other patients or members or BCBSNC employees. But as far as a monetary payoff goes, BCBSNC has not disclosed how much was spent on the campaign, so ROI remains unknown.
"This is not to make light of a serious issue," Brad Wilson, CEO of BCBSNC, said in a recent News & Observerarticle. "We made a conscious choice to use humor in this campaign as a way of opening the door to a conversation that can be complex and, at times, uncomfortable. Finding solutions to rein in medical costs is in the best interest of our company, our customers and everyone in North Carolina."
Humor is tough because it can be mistaken for downplaying the issue at hand. Lexington Medical Center in West Columbia, South Carolina has also used humor to highlight selected healthcare services or departments. Its television campaign features scenarios of people injuring themselves during the holidays. The tagline is: "We see some crazy things during the holidays. Please try and take it easy this year, have a safe and merry Christmas."
The physical comedy of holiday accidents in the Christmas commercial of 2010 won Lexington Medical Center an Aster Award in Healthcare Advertising, a national healthcare marketing award competition based on creativity, quality, message effectiveness, consumer appeal, graphic design, and overall impact.
In the Lexington Medical Center campaign, the acting is over-the-top and makes the point that the ad is meant to be taken light-heartedly. In the BCBSNC campaign, though the ad is meant to be humorous, the issue at hand is a serious one.
I can see laughing at hanging a wreath or tripping down the stairs, but escalating healthcare costs…? Not so funny to me.
What role does humor have in healthcare? Discuss in the comments section below.
To engage with patients and increase accessibility, Mayo Clinic is set to open a facility at the Mall of America this summer. The project, titled Create Your Mayo Clinic Health Experience at Mall of America, focuses on targeted prevention and wellness programs to help patients stay healthy.
"We know healthcare in the future will not be limited to hospitals and doctor's offices," says David Hayes, M.D., cardiologist at Mayo Clinic in a press release. "Mall of America provides an opportunity for Mayo Clinic to help transform healthcare delivery by enhancing convenience and enabling more people to access Mayo Clinic health resources on a day-to-day basis."
Hayes is one of the leaders of the Mall of America project. The facility is also designed to offer direct connections to Mayo Clinic. Other main features of the clinic include the ability for patients to:
Interact – with health touchscreen applications
Engage – with patient navigators and Mayo-experts
Relate – with individualized programs
Participate – in health education classes
Share – offerings from Mayo Clinic health professionals specific to women's health, sports, and performance health
Learn – about other services Mayo Clinic has to offer
"This is really about Mayo's commitment to helping people live the best lives they possibly can," says John La Forgia, senior administrator for the project, in a press release. "We would also like to gather more input
Click here to learn more about the Create Your Mayo Clinic Health Experience at Mall of America project. "Mall of America" is a registered trademark.
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 25th, 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
2)Collaborate
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.
Westerly Hospital: Facebook Fail
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.
It's well understood that the U.S. is teeming with a population that's older and sicker than ever. Quick facts: there are over 78 million baby boomers in the U.S. today. Six out of ten will have more than one chronic condition. The 50+ healthcare market is expected to grow 23% over the next decade, while the same market for those 18-49 will climb only 1%, according to research in Case Studies in Niche Marketing.
With these facts in mind, there is a booming (pun intended) opportunity for marketers to target the niche audience. Julie Sherman, senior director of brand services for Banner Health, offers practical advice for marketing for the aging population.
Step 1: Define the Audience and Goals
At the Banner MD Anderson Cancer Center the key demographic is Phoenix, AZ metropolitan seniors as well as their families, with the target market age range set at 45 plus. Banner Health has been expanding service lines geared toward seniors such as orthopedics and cardiovascular services.
The cancer center is set to open in the fall, and Banner marketers are looking to create a buzz getting baby boomers involved.
"The number one goal is to build name recognition," Sherman tells HealthLeaders Media. "Our research indicated that when people were asked to name the top cancer institute only 2% named MD Anderson."
Step 2: Recognize Obstacles and Successes
"One of the challenges we're working to overcome worried well and the people are really at risk. With our CRM tool we're able to define who is at risk. How we used to do it was by putting an ad in the paper saying come one, come all --- techniques to weed out the worried well and target the audience who really needs these services," Sherman says.
On any direct mailing campaign, there will be multiple prototyped catered toward the at-risk patient population. It is not "one size fits all," Sherman says.
It's equally important to know what works. In Banner's case, events have been successful.
For each service line, the marketing team will come up with a function they think will appeal to the patient demographic. Sherman estimates that Banner spends around $1,000 per hosted event.
"With email marketing you can fill the slots without spending a dollar," she says. "If we do ads we do them in the community sections of the paper."
The two most successful marketing techniques to reach seniors and baby boomers include email marketing and live events, Sherman says.
"We have facilities that are based in a population that is older population they are very engaged in events and lectures, it makes sense. People are living longer and really taking care of themselves in a very different way---they are very active in their health," she adds.
Integrated marketing techniques at Banner include hosting an event that will attract a certain audience, gather emails at the event, then follow up with an email campaign. For baby boomers, Sherman says a future event may be a lecture or a luminary walk dedicated to cancer patients.
Step 3: Adapt to Marketing Changes as the Population Ages
How will marketing change in the future due to the aging population? There are a number of factors to keep in mind with accountable care organization regulations, increased HIPAA scrutiny to prevent data breaches, and the growth of the medical home model.
"Our business model now is to drive patient volume. For ACOs, our goal will management of health in a cost efficient manner---keeping [patients] healthy and how to manage their disease processes," Sherman says. "It will different than marketing we have now that is based on driving patient volume. In the future there will be a lot more focus on disease management, reminder systems, incentives, [and] wellness programs. Positioning of our facilities as a comprehensive system in place, from ambulatory service centers, to inpatient, [to] hospice is going to be essential. We're really looking at a focus on the continuum of care so we can attract market share."
Healthcare marketing is a unique beast to tackle when compared to other fields. Marketers cannot guarantee their work. Quality is tough to measure. Healthcare is a service most people use because they have to, rather than because they want to (except for those who like lounging in examining rooms and undergoing surgeries). And because privacy standards are set high, there are limits on data usage.
In order for healthcare marketers to be credible, they need to be able to prove the worth of their efforts, especially in a cash-strapped economy. It is tough to determine when and how each marketing dollar tied to a campaign will pay off. Example: If there is a campaign promoting the emergency department of Hospital B, there’s no good way to tell who chose Hospital B as a result of the campaign, and who chose it for other reasons.
Though the measurement of marketing dollars can only go so far, I wanted to explore some ways healthcare marketers are watching their ROI and making the most of their budgets.
Genesis Health System in Davenport, IA started a blog in 2004 to educate their patients about bariatric surgery. The blog features bariatric surgery patients who provide regular updates about their experiences. In order to see the blogger updates, viewers must sign up and provide information such as email, address, age, and how the viewer discovered the blog.
Smart move. Collecting this small sample of information is vital when it comes to measuring how people are responding to a marketing effort.
Other health systems have websites boasting patient success stories and examples of what services they offer. The upside of funneling some of this information into a blog that requires registration can allow marketers to appropriately measure who chooses their services as a result. They can even cross-check names when patients check-in to see which ones are signed up for the blog.
Genesis spent $16,000 on media advertising ---a flexible number based upon the health system’s financial resources. The same goes for allocated staff time and resources. The bloggers were not compensated, but their work time spent on the blog must be factored into expenses. Here's the breakdown according to A Marketer’s Guide to Measuring ROI:
Blog development --- $1,000
Staff time --- $2,500
Media advertising --- $16,000
Total = $19,500
Genesis tracked new patients resulting from this effort by asking new registrants for the bariatric surgery program if they used the blog. Factoring out business they would have received anyway --- the total of new cases as a result of the campaign was 30. The average net revenue per case is $1,500:
Net Revenue ($45,000) – marketing expense ($19,500)
Marketing expense ($19,500)
= ROI% (131%)
More Quick ROI tips:
Factor out business you would have received anyway.
Designate a time period in which you expect the efforts to pay off
Designate a service you can measure (to the best of your ability)
Measure net revenue derived from patient volumes
The resulting positive ROI (131%) of the bariatric surgery blog shows it did, in fact, boost patient volume for Genesis Health System.
Here's another tip: Provide a section for the patient to enter a patient identification number. This way, the fact that they follow the blog can be included on their electronic medical record (EMR). This way, data is centralized and easy to find.
Genesis Health System's blogs are an example of a marketing effort that is well-connected. Staff act as bloggers and champions of the services, a simple questionnaire at check-in helps monitor blog patient volume, and media efforts promoting the blog also help to boost awareness.
How do you measure your marketing ROI? Discuss in our comments section below.
Blue Cross Blue Shield of North Carolina has launched a new ad campaign featuring scapegoats for rising healthcare costs. The print ads and commercials have goats dressed in shirts with the tag line, "let's stop looking for scapegoats." Creators of the campaign home the message will indicate that insurers, doctors, hospitals, consumers, and anyone associated with healthcare should look to reduce healthcare costs.
Blue Cross Blue Shield of North Carolina has launched a new ad campaign featuring scapegoats. The print ads and commercials have goats dressed in shirts with the tag line, "let's stop looking for scapegoats."
Creators of the campaign hope the message will indicate that insurers, doctors, hospitals, consumers, and anyone associated with healthcare should look to reduce healthcare costs.
"Consumers are incredibly skeptical of Blue Cross," says Adam Linker, a policy analyst at the N.C. Justice Center's Health Access Coalition in a recent News & Observer article. "Blue Cross is going to have to be part of the solution, but when they hear Blue Cross talking about cost control, they worry it means Blue Cross is trying to keep more money for itself."
The ad campaign that tackles the subject of healthcare cost head-on was created by Capstrat, a Raleigh public relations and marketing firm.
For more information about the ad campaign, click here to view the discussion.
One of the most popular HealthLeaders marketing webcastseach year continues to be physician referrals. As fluid and amorphous as healthcare continues to be, marketers continue to crave the knowhow for building, tracking, and measuring physician referrals.
This year, while discussing the topic with webcast speakers I noticed a common obstacle: difficulty getting passed the gatekeepers and collecting referrals from hard to reach practices. The HealthLeaders Rachet Up Physician Referrals: Proven Methods & Measures webcast on May 18 will address this issue among others.
Breaking the barriers into hard-to-reach practices does not come easy, experts say. Scott & White Healthcare, consisting of 12 hospital sites and 60+ clinics, had 22,331 baseline referrals in FY 2007 and boosted the number to 41,885 in FY 2010. The organization's target for FY 2011 is 51,144.
One way Scott & White is able to keep the referrals pouring in is by facilitating regular physician network events such as dinners for cross-introductions. Brian Borchardt, director of physician relations at Scott & White Healthcare, advises that successful physician relations include building a connection with senior leadership such as VPs of the organization they are referring.
Communication is a hot topic in the field of physician referrals. Though face-to-face interaction can help the numbers stack up, other, less-personal means can help too.
A common obstacle for practices has been measurement of primary care physicians (PCP) referrals. Specialists should send a note back with the patient's PCP saying what occurred and what care is necessary improves both patient satisfaction and the continuum of care, advises Kriss Barlow in her bookA Marketer's Guide to Physician Relations.
Other communication techniques include sending out an electronic newsletter sent out to external physicians and staff members.
"They know the name of the cardiologist who referred the patient and the name of the hospitalist who admitted the patient, but often fail to capture the name of the doctor whom the patient sees regularly," writes Barlow, principal at Barlow/McCarthy, a consulting group focused on hospital- physician solutions.
She advises that practices set up consistent measures to track PCP referrals and set achievable goals. Tracking physician referral patterns in a database can show which service lines need targeting. Just because one physician gives many referrals doesn't mean there is no more room for growth for referrals to other specialties, Barlow writes.
Barbara McLaurine, manager of physician services at Progress West HealthCare Center stresses the point of creating a "just say yes" attitude within your clinical operations team. Is it easy to do business with your hospital? If not, what are the solutions and how are they divided? These two questions are key to creating a growth mentality, she advises.
"Physician relations teams are in an excellent position to be a conduit for communication to physicians about the ACO conversations at your hospital. Likewise, there is an excellent opportunity to learn more about the physician's sentiments- their concerns and plans they are formulating," Barlow says.
"Today referral development programs are working very hard to keep the competitive edge, it means attention to all the details and it means systematic and consistent results," she adds.
At Children’s Hospital in Los Angeles, paparazzi stakeouts are part of the norm. On a weekly basis, celebrities are known to pass through the double doors of the hospital to volunteer, sign autographs, or take a guided tour.
“There’s no better way to get photographers to take pictures,” says Amanda Hedlund, marketing specialist for Children’s Hospital LA. "Kids will request certain celebrities. [They] love getting signed memorabilia and signed pictures. Especially right now with our new hospital building, we've been reaching out to get [celebrities] involved."
We know that linking a celeb with brand marketing isn't unique. But is it effective? If a hospital engaged Justin Beiber to promote a hospital vaccination campaign, would parents take packs of young girls in to get their cootie shots?
Not necessarily. It turns out that celebrities are not at the top of the list for faces patients trust the most. A Harris Interactive poll conducted on the behalf of Adweek shows that consumers ranked business leaders more persuasive than celebrities when delivering endorsements.
In an online survey of 2,186 adults, the following categories were ranked…
1. Business leaders (37%)
2. Athletes (21%)
3. TV/movie stars (18%)
4. Politicians (10%)
At Children’s Hospital LA, celebrity visitors have included: Britney Spears, Jennifer Lopez, Heidi Klum, and Kim Kardashian. Instead of marketing celeb endorsements, the hospital markets celebrity visits to promote the hospital.
Hospitals that use celebrities for marketing purposes maximize the impact of celebrity visits by:
Word of mouth. Child life specialists at Children's Healthcare of Atlanta help children adjust to the psychological effects of their stay—the staff uses these connections to determine which celebrities would make for an exciting visit.
Connecting with local companies. Establishing a relationship with a department store or local business can also help to draw celebrity attention to a hospital. Children's Healthcare of Atlanta has a long-standing relationship with Macys and Rooms to Go. Both of which encourage celebrities and spokespeople to visit the hospital.
Enhancing security. Any hospital looking to bring in a celebrity with media entourage needs to be prepared for some of the negative effects. During flu season, Children's Hospital of LA does not have as many visits in order to keep infections to a minimum. Also, in order to keep paparazzi and major disturbances away, some hospitals do not release information of the VIP's identity until after the visit.
"Usually we don't announce it until after the fact ---we'll give [a] heads up media advisory [to] give them an opportunity to take pictures," says Hedlund. "We can't announce it in-house because they'll get bombarded."
Both Children's Healthcare of Atlanta and Children's Hospital of LA have security teams who are alerted the day of a visit.
Increasing Interactivity of a visit. Some celeb visits may only last a couple of hours, but some hospitals have found ways to market the experience to a larger audience over an extended period of time.
Children’s Hospital LA is opening a new tower in July and is using Lakers player Pau Gasol to promote the expansion. The idea originally started as a marketing campaign, but then transformed into an interactive video game, similar to where’s Waldo, which uses images of Pau hiding in different spots of the hospital’s new wing.
“We had a brainstorming session about it and at first it was going to be a campaign but it turned into a game,” says Hedlund. "This way patients can interact and play with others while learning about the new wing of the hospital."
Children's Healthcare of Atlanta has also used technology to extend the life of celebrity visits. The hospital has built a broadcast media center called the Voice through the support of the Ryan Seacrest Foundation and hosts celebrity performances and interviews on a regular basis.
Patients who are too sick to attend a celebrity visit can tune in on TV and have the opportunity to call in to ask questions. Other patients who are well enough, can visit the radio tower to conduct interviews on air, says Brant Rawls, public relations representative for Children's Healthcare of Atlanta.
“We have several campuses with 250 beds each, this way every patient has the opportunity to be a part of the visit by watching it on their television or calling in” adds Chris Jones, director of volunteer services at Children's Healthcare of Atlanta.
Marketers looking to make celebrity connections with their hospital should look into teaming up with local radio stations or record labels, Jones advises.
"The best place to start is to initiate a relationship with radio stations and the record labels. They have a lot of influence over the time the artists have," she adds. "It's high-energy word of mouth."
Have celebrities visited your hospital? How does your staff make the most of a visit? Discuss in our comments section bellow.
Sometimes, there's a thin line separating hospital marketing messages from spam. Let's face it. Both are competing for our limited attention with a flood of buzzwords, invites, and links. Standing out in a sea of search results does not happen automatically at the click of a mouse.
More than 80% of U.S. adults are using the Internet to search for healthcare information, according to a 2011 Pew Internet survey. It is the third-most-popular online activity behind email and search engine use.
"Right now, the most accurate searches involve up to four keywords. People are no longer searching for terms such as heart failure. They are searching for 'heart valve replacement Chicago,'" explained Elizabeth Scott, CEO of Raven New Media and Marketing. "I think you need to recognize the power of regional boundaries and play this up in search engine optimization (SEO) and search engine marketing (SEM) strategies."
Luring potential patients away from WebMD and back to your practice or hospital requires some magnetic marketing techniques. With search engine optimization in mind, Emory Heart & Vascular Center launched a marketing campaign in January 2011 designed to drive visitors to the EHVC website and increase patient volume.
Their tactics included:
Consolidating content by theme and keywords
Creating dropdown menus allowing visitors to select their conditions
Updating an EHVC blog at least once a week with links to the website
Promoting patient success stories with videos highlighting unique procedures and success stories from EHVC
Using social media to draw website traffic
The result? Within a month of the campaign, website traffic rose 34.8% in visits and 16.7% in page views. EHVC also ranks high on Google search results—often on the first page or in the top position for heart and vascular keywords, example: heart valve replacement GA.
"To show up in organic searches you really need to concentrate on a strategy that will allow you to own a niche such as a sub service line, a highly specialized procedure, a unique success story, or an innovation that isn't common among hospitals---otherwise you will be buried under tons of cookie-cutter service line and general hospital information," says Scott.
Social media seems like the obvious choice for a health facility to demonstrate a unique voice and offerings. A national Capstrat-Public Policy Polling survey, however, has found that more than 85% of respondents would not use social media for medical communication if their docs offered it.
A step to making your hospital's Twitter account relevant could be tapping in to popular conversation treads. Hashtags, or Twitter search terms, start with the "#" symbol and a keyword for the discussion. The most popular healthcare hashtags are ones centered on healthcare reform. Some of the most popular healthcare hashtags by total views according to Healthcare Hashtag Project include the following:
#hcsm --- healthcare communications and social media
#opnhealth – A reform hashtag, related to #hcr (healthcare reform) and #healthreform
#hpm – Conversations on hospice and palliative care, related to hashtags #hospice and #palliative.
#MDchat – A Twitter Chat term for physicians. The term is related to others like #physician and #doctors.
#eldercarechat – A Twitter Chat hashtag focused on issues of importance to elder care professionals and caregivers.
#HealthIT – Discussions on health information technology, related terms include #HIT and #eprescribing. Influencers include @ONC_HealthIT, the Office National Coordinator of Health IT.
#mHealth – A tag for mobile health and telemedicine discussions, related to #eHealth
Staying niche-specific and encouraging the conversion is key to boosting patient volume, says Scott. We forget to encourage sharing. Phrases like 'please past this along' or 'post this to your page' are powerful, communal calls to action," she said.
Word choice can make or break a hospital marketing campaign. Does your healthcare facility have a blog or Twitter account? How do you make your marketing campaigns more 'Google-friendly'?
