We’ve all heard the horror stories. We know all about the doctors, nurses, and administrative personnel who have breached patient privacy laws by gossiping about patients (some even posting photos) on social media sites like Facebook and Twitter. These lapses in professional judgment are a travesty — without question. Consequently, social media has become somewhat taboo in healthcare circles.
Many healthcare providers are reluctant to explore the possibilities of social media because they are unclear how to best leverage these tools or implement proper usage policies. These providers fear engaging in social media will expose their organizations to a new and largely uncontrollable security risk. As a result, many providers have opted to stay away. This is an unfortunate response to the issue, because closing the door on social media not only eliminates the security threat, it also prevents a provider from realizing the countless benefits social media can deliver.
Compiled by Ken Congdon, Editor In Chief
Patient privacy concerns have kept many healthcare providers from seriously pursuing a social media strategy. However, leveraging these tools effectively can have a profound impact on patient communication and engagement.
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We’ve all heard the horror stories. We know all about the doctors, nurses, and administrative personnel who have breached patient privacy laws by gossiping about patients (some even posting photos) on social media sites like Facebook and Twitter. These lapses in professional judgment are a travesty — without question. Consequently, social media has become somewhat taboo in healthcare circles.
Many healthcare providers are reluctant to explore the possibilities of social media because they are unclear how to best leverage these tools or implement proper usage policies. These providers fear engaging in social media will expose their organizations to a new and largely uncontrollable security risk. As a result, many providers have opted to stay away. This is an unfortunate response to the issue, because closing the door on social media not only eliminates the security threat, it also prevents a provider from realizing the countless benefits social media can deliver.
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Social media has become a primary means for individuals to interact with one another. By ignoring these platforms, health providers are turning their backs on a primary (and often preferred) method for interacting with their patients. Rather than alienate social media, health providers should strive to understand how to leverage these platforms effectively and securely. Several leading health systems have been extremely successful in this regard. Social media experts from three of these health systems — Mayo Clinic, Dana- Farber Cancer Institute, and Beaumont Health System — share their best practices in the following paragraphs. Each of these institutions was recognized by the MHA (Masters of Healthcare Administration) as one of the Top 50 Social Media Friendly Hospitals for 2013.
Q: How do you leverage different social media platforms as part of your overall strategy?
Aase: Mayo Clinic started getting serious about social media in 2008. At that time, we became involved in what I call the four basic food groups of social media — Facebook, YouTube, Twitter, and blogs. Facebook became a means for us to disseminate information and develop stronger connections and relationships with our patient community. I often say Facebook is for your friends, and Twitter is for the friends you don’t know yet. We leverage Twitter to connect with people whom we may not have a direct relationship with yet. One way we do this is by hosting Twitter chats focused on healthcare topics of interest to specific audiences.
This provides us with a platform to showcase our thought leadership and capabilities in these areas. We attract new connections to these chats through use of associated keywords and hashtags. YouTube, on the other hand, provides a way for us to share actual patient stories and physician expertise via video. Capturing these stories on video is often much more compelling and influential than plain text could ever be. We have continued to become involved in several other social media platforms over the years including LinkedIn, Google Plus, and Pinterest.
Davies: All of the social media outlets we leverage are basically ways to disseminate different types of content and engage in conversations with our patients. For example, we use LinkedIn as a more professional outlet in which to share our scientific cancer research with other clinicians and researchers. This helps to educate the industry while solidifying our position as a leader in the area of cancer research. However, we would never post this in-depth research on Facebook. Facebook is an outlet for news that would be consumable and useful to our general patient population. For example, we post news about our physicians, tips for sun safety, and similar mainstream content on Facebook.
Wesolek: For Beaumont, Facebook is an outlet in which to develop personal connections with people. We post a lot of news announcements and general wellness information on this platform. Twitter is all about frequency and the fact that it’s real time. We post news here as well, but also use Twitter to cover live events and sometimes to directly interact with patients. YouTube is an outlet for our video content, which includes physician Q&As and news stories about Beaumont. Finally, we’ve also recently become heavily involved on Pinterest. Folks are often surprised that a hospital would have a Pinterest page, but we’ve found it to be an ideal platform in which to share healthy lifestyle information. For example, we use Pinterest to share healthy and gluten-free recipes with our patient community.
Q: Do you have a formal social media policy?
Aase: Yes. We provide all Mayo employees with a list of social media guidelines that detail what is expected of them when using social media. These guidelines include HIPAA and PHI considerations. We have also produced a training video and offer an in-depth, one-day course called Social Media Residency to employees who are really interested in actively applying social media to their practice or research initiatives. We trust our physicians with narcotics and sharp instruments. There’s no reason we can’t trust them with social media. However, like anything else, they need to be properly trained to be effective and prevent mistakes.
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Cummings: We’ve had a formal social media usage policy in place at Dana-Farber for a while. We felt that with all the PHI and HIPAA regulations that impact healthcare, we had to be very clear on how our employees should leverage social media from the hospital’s perspective. Basically, we apply the same PHI rules to social media as we apply to other communication vehicles both inside and outside the institute.
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Wesolek: We actually have two different social media policies. One is a formal “do’s and don’ts” document that comes from HR. The other is a set of guidelines that the communications department distributes that outlines what we expect of employees who leverage social media for professional purposes and how they can become an active participant in our social media efforts. We didn’t want to be too prescriptive with these guidelines because we didn’t want to scare people away. Instead, our goal was to entice our employees to become good social media ambassadors for Beaumont while abiding by some fairly reasonable rules.
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Q: What is the biggest benefit of social media to your organization?
Aase: From our standpoint, social media is the new way for Mayo Clinic to generate and spread word-of-mouth publicity — particularly from the perspective of satisfied patients. For example, we have patients writing on our Facebook wall and sharing their positive care experiences. Similarly, we have captured many of these patient stories on video and share them on YouTube. Twenty percent of our patients come to us from more than 500 miles away, so this type of word of mouth is very important to instilling confidence in our care. Many prospective patients want to connect with others to ensure the long trip to Mayo is worth it for them. Social media provides an outlet for them to do just that. For example, we’ve established several social media communities that allow patients (and prospective patients) to engage in discussions around their specific conditions or diseases. These communities are safe forums for patients to ask questions and get answers from their peers.
Cummings: At Dana-Farber, social media is all about engaging with patients and creating a dialogue. Social media not only provides us with a way to distribute important content, but it also gives our patients a voice. Patients write comments on our Facebook wall or tweet us every day regarding their experiences. There’s no way we could ever get this type of unsolicited feedback without social media. Two recent initiatives at Dana-Farber truly illustrate social media’s power to engage. One example is our “cancer tattoo” project. Via our social media forums, we saw that several of our patients were discussing how they were getting tattoos to creatively express their cancer journey. We wanted to provide our patients with a platform to share these tattoos. We created a Facebook gallery where people could share images of their tattoos and the stories behind them. To date, we’ve received more than 500 responses. It’s been completely overwhelming. Another example is a recent Google Hangout we coordinated with six young adult cancer bloggers and young cancer patients. The hangout connected patients with a support community of their peers. Questions were answered. Experiences were shared, and fears were addressed. It was truly a powerful exchange of information and compassion.
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Wesolek: Social media can go beyond engagement and become an additional means to interact directly with patients. As a result, it can have a profound impact on the patient experience overall. For example, I work closely with our service excellence team. I frequently monitor social media to ensure we are as responsive to patient needs as we can be. In this capacity, I am often well-positioned to field patient complaints and respond immediately. For instance, a patient recently tweeted how they had been waiting an inordinate amount of time for a wheelchair in order to be discharged. I saw this tweet and immediately called the wing in which the patient was treated. Within 10 minutes, we were able to resolve this issue. Overall, the issue was minor, but it had a major impact on the care experience of this particular patient. Resolving the issue was facilitated because of social media.
Q: How do you plan to further your social media efforts in the future?
Aase: We want to get our social media platforms and tools much more integrated within the Mayo Clinic website overall. We want to ensure the conversations taking place on social media are leading back to our online patient communities or disease centers. Currently, these two worlds are separate and only come together when a patient takes the proper initiative. We’d like to merge these worlds more closely.
Q: What advice would you give to other providers seeking to increase their involvement in social media?
Aase: My first piece of advice would be to actively pursue it. There are 1.3 billion people on Facebook. Social media is becoming the way people are choosing to communicate with one another. It’s important for a health provider to take advantage of these tools. My other piece of advice would be to start small. We got started on social media by creating secret Facebook groups that didn’t really require us to have any special hardware or software.
Cummings: Be engaging and engaged. You can’t just create a Facebook page and let it sit idle. You need to infuse it with useful content and be responsive to patient inquiries. Also, the content you promote via social media needs to be much more than just a marketing brochure. It needs to provide value to your audience.
We’ve all heard the horror stories. We know all about the doctors, nurses, and administrative personnel who have breached patient privacy laws by gossiping about patients (some even posting photos) on social media sites like Facebook and Twitter. These lapses in professional judgment are a travesty — without question. Consequently, social media has become somewhat taboo in healthcare circles.
Social media has become a primary means for individuals to interact with one another. By ignoring these platforms, health providers are turning their backs on a primary (and often preferred) method for interacting with their patients. Rather than alienate social media, health providers should strive to understand how to leverage these platforms effectively and securely. Several leading health systems have been extremely successful in this regard. Social media experts from three of these health systems — Mayo Clinic, Dana- Farber Cancer Institute, and Beaumont Health System — share their best practices in the following paragraphs. Each of these institutions was recognized by the MHA (Masters of Healthcare Administration) as one of the Top 50 Social Media Friendly Hospitals for 2013.
Wesolek: Social media can go beyond engagement and become an additional means to interact directly with patients. As a result, it can have a profound impact on the patient experience overall. For example, I work closely with our service excellence team. I frequently monitor social media to ensure we are as responsive to patient needs as we can be. In this capacity, I am often well-positioned to field patient complaints and respond immediately. For instance, a patient recently tweeted how they had been waiting an inordinate amount of time for a wheelchair in order to be discharged. I saw this tweet and immediately called the wing in which the patient was treated. Within 10 minutes, we were able to resolve this issue. Overall, the issue was minor, but it had a major impact on the care experience of this particular patient. Resolving the issue was facilitated because of social media.
