Hospital CEO's Social Media Strategy: Investing in Online Conversation

Healthcare CEO's:
Social Media Strategy –
Investing in Online Conversation
Key to Your Success

MyHealthCommunity Social Network, Inc

Introduction
Social Media Technology is rapidly changing how healthcare
organizations communicate, collaborate and engage with their
community
Social networks are an essential element of today’s social and business environments.
Participation growth rates for the main social media tools are nothing short of
phenomenal and significantly, this growth is fairly evenly distributed across multiple
demographic groups as defined by age, sex, education and income. A significant portion
of the population is now using online social networks; both in their personal lives and
increasingly for work. In fact the 65+ age group has experienced a 55% increase in social
media use over the past five years according to the Nielson Company. In addition this
same group spent over 58 hours per month online.

http://blog.nielsen.com
Apart from the amazing growth numbers, social media is a tectonic force at the
intersection of technology and media... shifting from traditional communications like
newspapers, radio, and TV. Why is this so? Unlike those prior shifts, social media allows
two-way conversation between people and between people and organizations. A
conversational model is significant because it allows the development of personal
relationships; and with those relationships offers the opportunity to build trust and
influence opinions.
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MyHealthCommunity Social Network, Inc, 135 Market St., Portsmouth, NH, 03841

603-553-2997 www.myhealthcommunity.net

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Social Media in Healthcare is Growing

http://ebennett.org

Social media technology offers numerous opportunities for healthcare organizations.
These include fostering hospital/community collaborative efforts, growing and retaining
your customer base, boosting product and strategy innovation, improving talent
acquisition and retention, leveraging customer input to develop profitable new business
models, and lowering costs and increasing efficiencies for PR and marketing. And not
least, by being a part of the on-line conversations about your hospital, you are in a much
better position to manage the risks.

Healthcare organizations that ignore the social media phenomenon risk being left out of
these powerful consumer conversations. Choosing to begin the planning and
implementation of a social media strategy now will enable your hospital to make the
most of the competitive advantages that can be gained and boost your market share
over the long-term. Delaying means increasing the risk that competing organizations will
move first, thus gaining the advantage, losing customers as they engage online.
Does your organization have a comprehensive strategy in place that can deliver specific
healthcare solutions? Is your organization ready to move? Do you understand the

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challenges involved? Do you understand the common mistakes and missteps others
have made? Have you researched and addressed the special concerns social media has
for healthcare organizations? Will you be able to measure your progress against your
goals?
We can help you answer these and other critical questions, recommend strategies,
implement components and assist with integration issues.

Four Critical Social Media Concepts
Concept #1: Social Media is a Process
Instead of watching a commercial or visiting a website, social media lets the customer
engage, comment, and influence products and service. It’s interactive, an exchange of
ideas, insights and collaboration toward a better patient experience. It is a long term
process to build your community of users, friends and fans and develop their trust. It's
investing in a long-term relationship through conversation- key to our connection to the
customer. Be open to let the community-your customers influence your service.

Concept #2: Marketing Shifts to Voice of the Patient
The new online generation doesn’t read papers, they fast-forward through commercials.
Why? Because they want to be heard, listened to, and help shape their world.
For your business or organizations, this means shifting from pushing out your messages
to participating in online conversations and shaping the messaging to incorporate the
needs and desires of your customers. Social media then becomes an adaptive
technology for your organization, letting you constantly poll the views of your
customers and adjust your messaging as needed.
Empower the patient’s voice – 0pen up to let your customers market for you. Most
referrals in healthcare are word of mouth; satisfied patients tell their friends and
neighbors about their experiences. Hosting a social media platform provides an
additional venue for these word-of-mouth referrals.

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Concept #3: Social Media vs. Digital Marketing?
Social Media Strategy EARNS on-line and off-line coverage whereas Digital Marketing
BUYS on-line and off-line coverage. Digital Marketing like websites and mobile phone
text messages push out to customers but do not invite customer comments, share their
opinions about your products and services or allow cross-sharing of various media such
as images and video with other customers. The message with social media is that you
care about your patients and future customers. You are interested in their voice.

Concept #4: Empower Patients with Medical “Shopping Skills”
As shown in the chart below, recommendations from family and friends are the most
powerful forms of influence, followed by experts and independent reviews. Why? It’s
all about trust when facing health issues. Historically, birth, sickness and dying were
community events where relatives and community gathered round these events for
support. Everyone knew the town doctors. Today’s patients are vulnerable and face life-
changing events often alone. Online patients gather support from others online who
share in their same disease or health condition. They search online for information and
often trust information from friends, family and even unknown sources of information.
Lacking access to data, your consumers need you to arm them with expert resources so
they can make informed decisions. Tell them how you would choose a surgeon for your
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child. Don’t just refer your customers to available online statistics and quality measures
such as Leapfrog or AHRQ (Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality). Teach them
what measures to look for and how to interpret data. You will soon become their
trusted source for medical information.

Source: Jan 2009, Asia’s Top Digital Brands TNS/Media Magazine (n=3001)

Reduce Costs and Drive Business with Social Media
Benefit #1: Become a Trusted Partner in Care
Social media lets your healthcare organization the home for you to nurture this trust
over time through online relationship building with your customers. You offer a home
for patients and potential customers to come to find partners in their care.

Benefit #2: Maximize Your Healthcare Marketing Efforts
Social media strategies can be less expensive and more cost effective than traditional
advertising. Companies such as Pepsi have abandoned their Super Bowl commercials
and launched social media campaigns in their place. The potential to reach beyond your
current customer base and expand the reach of your hospital is exponential with social
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media. With the right dialog, you can convince them you are the provider of choice and
they will spread that word. Millions of consumers are online, waiting for you to connect
with them and harness their power.

Benefit #3: Show Pro-Active and Caring Response to Patient Concerns
Fear of what could be said on social media about your hospital may be holding you back.
The problem is your customers are already talking about you in the church parking lot or
at the local coffee shop. By being engaged on-line with your customers, you can stay on
top of customer complaints and respond to issues and concerns quickly. Demonstrate
how you listen to customers and respond to improve your performance to the greater
online audience. Show how you are pro-active in safe, quality care.

Benefit #4: Promote Your Revenue Rich Quality Centers of Excellence
Promote your most profitable service lines; clinical specialties, new technologies, “star
surgeons”, and more. Be the resource, the preferred hospital that the online community
points to. Become your regions expert “Centers of Excellence.”
Reposition less profitable service areas to meet under-served customer demands. Drive
traffic to appropriate care venues. For example shift ER patients to clinic visits for flu
treatment, bring MRI volume back showing you offer the best technology.

Benefit #5: Market Research Stays Relevant and Current to Your Patients
Social media makes market research inexpensive. In addition, you get information
directly from your consumer which makes even more valuable. Consumer analytics lie
within online conversation as well as web traffic data. Gather information by monitoring
traffic to pick up new consumer trends and needs. Social media will provide your
clinicians a window to their patient’s desires and health behaviors before and after care.
Benefit #6: Preventive Health Information and Education
Platform

Help improve the general health of your community by hosting on-line groups, posting
reminders for care/medication regimes for chronic conditions, presenting disease
awareness and prevention programs, and more. Partner with public health resources
and promote awareness of community resources.
Benefit #7: Prevent non-reimbursement /payments by Centers
for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS)

Educate your staff using podcasts, forums and other applications that prevent adverse
events, focus on patient safety, and lower medication errors through education, and
best practices. Create awareness and educate staff to address CMS performance

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standards. Give transparency to your performance for staff to motivate improvement
and customers see your effort to exceed expectations.

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Potential "gotchas" for Healthcare Executives
Common Mistake #1: Focusing too much on social media tactics such as
launching Facebook pages, Twittering
Some organizations may get lucky and create buzz by launching Facebook, MySpace,
YouTube, etc. However, there are risks without a well thought-out strategy. Social
media is quite powerful if done by building trust, brand recognition, and demonstrating
customer service. Social media needs to start with a well thought-out strategy,
promotion and implementation. Sufficient resources, software and technical support
and top level commitment are key to long term success.

Common Mistake #2: Not building in the measures for success.
Social media is a process – not a platform. Understanding the objectives and building
the tools that will automate the collection of the data through automation is critical to
the process. Tools and platforms are available to measure and monitor the activity to
best understand what is working and refine what is not working will get the best return
on investment.

GETTING STARTED
Getting started is relatively easy. Developing a strategy is the key to success. Here are a
few things to think about as you get things rolling.
1. Develop a strategy that can go forward within the next 18 to 24 months.
2. Determine whether or not you have the skills in-house to develop and implement a
comprehensive strategy. If you decide to bring in an outside consulting firm, it is
critical to retain one who understands the healthcare business.
3. Use the 80/20 rule. First target those areas that will have high impact for your
organization and that have high probability of success.
4. Remember to focus on developing process, structure and communications prior to
implementing tactics.
5. Make sure all parties involved understand that building a community of loyal users,
friends and fans and earning their trust is a long term process.
6. Ensure that risk management is an integral part of your overall strategy.

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STRATEGIZE AND PLAN
Does your organization have a comprehensive strategy in place that can deliver specific
healthcare solutions? Is your organization ready to move? Do you understand the
challenges involved? Do you understand the common mistakes and missteps others
have made? Have you researched and addressed the special concerns social media has
for healthcare organizations? Will you be able to measure your progress against your
goals?
We can help you answer these and other critical questions, recommend strategies,
implement components and assist with integration issues.

The time to start is now. Ignoring social media opportunities cedes the advantage to
your competitors. In addition to a significant return on your investment, you will reach
a new generation and begin the process of building loyalty. The potential benefits are
huge and the risks are manageable.

About

MyHealthCommunity (MHC) is a service and platform company. MHC is dedicated to
serving hospitals and hospital enterprises with services and platforms to increase
patient satisfaction, reduce costs, build your brand and provide patient education
through social media. MHC has brought together healthcare and social media experts
that understand the hospital industry. Our team is ready to help you get started with a
social media solution.

Sales@myhealthcommunity.net

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Appendix A: Map a Successful Strategy
Each healthcare organization has a unique set of factors to consider when planning a
social media strategy. Cookie-cutter strategies lead to dead ends. However, a common
process for designing a strategy can be applied with success.
Use the following roadmap as a starting point:
1. Understand Social Engagement with your Customer/ Community.
a. What it is, why it matters, who your customers are.
b. Target which customers you need to build new or different relationships with.
2. Define your organizational objectives
a. What are your desired results with an investment in social technology?
b. What are the desired results that your organization wants to achieve?
c. How should you incorporate your vision and mission statement into this
strategy?
3. Understand and profile your customer
a. Who your different customers are including your current relationships,
engagement and levels of trust with each type of customer.
b. Define target customer you need to build new or different relationships with.
c. Which targeted customers will be best served by which social media?
d. Who are the best initial targets for the first 6 to 9 months?
e. What is the best way to engage with them? Match social media to customer
needs.
f. What services and information are they most interested in and how do they
want to get it?
g. Prioritize which customers to target first.
4. Match your Customer Communications with Customer Needs and Desires
a. What do you want to communicate, to whom, in what way?
b. How are you communicating today – phone, direct mail, face-to-face, and so on?
How are measuring the success of your communications? What is working and
not working today?
c. Do you want to educate, inform, guide, motivate, connect, position, with your
customer?
d. Which social media tools are most effective for your purposes?
e. What sort of messaging will best resonate with your target audience?
5. Select your social media platform and/or tools
a. Do you need a platform, or just a selection of tools?
b. How do you evaluate available platforms?
c. Are there any platforms designed specifically for healthcare organizations?
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d. How can you effectively use Facebook, MySpace, LinkedIn, Twitter, YouTube etc?
e. How does your social media strategy integrate with your existing web site?
f. How much content control do you need, and why? What are the benefits and
costs involved? Who will generate content?
6. Understand how HIPPA regulations may affect your strategy
a. How will you protect protected patient information (PHI)? Advise and educate
users how to converse with medical information and protect their privacy or
patient’s privacy. Build guidelines and social media policy. Develop a process to
protect PHI.
b. What information will be posted? Who should post the information? Will there
be checks? Will the rules be different for patient-specific clinical information vs.
general health information? Require anonymous user names.
c. What administrative tools do you need to protect patient information? Different
user levels with assigned permissions? Approval process for content and tools.
d. What are your liabilities and how do you mitigate risk?
7. Determine and address your potential legal issues
a. What are the potential liabilities for your organization and how can you best
mitigate them?
b. Do you need to write up new member agreement, terms of use, and disclaimer
documents, or will existing (web site) documents work?
c. What issues are specific for your medical staff; for your employees?
8. Get your champions on-board
a. Develop your champions with skills to connect with your target audience?
b. Who are the thought leaders? Who are your superstars, “The Heart Doctor” or
“Sleep Expert”? Researchers on the cutting edge of medical solutions?
c. Can you identify healthcare champions and stakeholders in the community to
partner with?
d. Do you have staff that are both passionate and want to participate?
e. What are the staffing requirements in terms of skills and time investment?
9. Develop your internal processes and plans
a. What are your budgetary requirements?
b. What are your short-term and long-term goals? Clinical areas projected to grow
or losing volume? Consider which areas need to recruit doctors/staff to build
expertise.
c. What organizational impact will implementing social media initiatives have?
d. What executive/board support is required?
e. Who will be the corporate sponsor(s)? Will there be a social media strategic
advisory group? Will there be medical staff and clinical representation? Who will
run it and be accountable?
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10. Determine how to measure your progress against your objectives
a. What information is required to measure results? What metrics will you use?
b. What are your baseline measurements?
c. What measurement tools are available? How will you quantify success?
11. Tactics
a. platforms
b. security
c. process
d. controls
e. measurement
The time to start is now. Ignoring social media opportunities cedes the advantage to
your competitors. The potential benefits are huge and the risks are manageable.
12. Develop a strategy that can be carried out over the next 18 to 24 months.
13. Determine whether or not you have the skills in-house to develop and implement a
comprehensive strategy. If you decide to bring in an outside consulting firm, it is
critical that they have healthcare experience.
14. Use the 80/20 rule. First target those areas that will have high impact for your
organization and that have high probability of success.
15. Remember to focus on developing process, structure and communications prior to
implementing tactics.
16. Make sure all parties involved understand that building a community of loyal users,
friends and fans and earning their trust is a long term process.
17. Ensure that risk management is an integral part of your overall strategy.

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Hospital CEO's Social Media Strategy: Investing in Online Conversation

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