Social Media For Health Care

White Teeth Help When You Are Being Social

Albert Maruggi — Tue, 27 Jul 2010 16:46:58 +0000

Social media isn’t for every business but the more businesses implement social strategies the more that maxim may prove incorrect. Metro Dental Care is a dental practice that has several strong reasons for using social media. They are:

A large number, 39, locations across a relatively large geographic metro area.

Twin Cities metro residents actively use local web search in the dental keyword category
Research showed Metro Dental that convenience was a major factor for dental patients aligned with an attribute of their brand.
Dental is slightly less encumbered than other parts of health care from an insurance standpoint.

As you reflect on criteria 1-3 for Metro Dental you see characteristics that are not limited to healthcare at all. They are characteristics of potentially any retail, brick and mortar business. They have a large number of locations, with a significant amount of traffic required to support that business. Volume therefore is a factor. It is a topic where the web is used to inform consumers. I used Insights for Google to compare searches using a variety of key words in the dental health category comparing Chicago to Minneapolis/St. Paul. Across the board Minneapolis/St. Paul ranked higher in use of the web for information about dental than Chicago. It is just another data point that builds the case for being active and social online.

Metro Dental Director of Marketing & Communications, Candee Wolf, said convenience was a major factor for their patients and the market. Metro Dental as made convenience its brand mantra. From the 39 locations to extended office hours in the evenings and weekends, Metro Dental is about as patient friendly as you can get. Convenience is a buzz word for me in this era of communications. It means how can I save customers time?

Wolf said one of the first indications of convenience was a simple way to schedule appointments online. The form they have on line is perfect, simple, drop downs for type of visit, mobile number and email contact options to get back to the patient.

The trigger word convenience when it comes to brand means efficiency and simplicity. Take this concept of convenience further and being mobile also has merit. Being mobile is a condition between the originator of the information, the recipient, and their location. In the case of a health care entity who’s number one brand quality and differentiator is convenience, delivering information to a mobile receipient it is logical tactic. That mobility can be in the form of a Twitter profile, a mobile application or website, a text appointment reminder or other distribution tactics.

Lastly, in health care there are unique factors such as insurance coverage and in-network references that play a major role in customer selection. I some cases these factors may be so strong that it impacts the goals of a social media strategy or whether your organization participates online at all. This is less the case for Metro Dental, but it is not without consideration either. Insurance coverage and referrals do play a role in their ability to garner new customers. This has impacted the goals they established for their social media efforts. Those goals include the amount of conversation about Metro Dental, the quality of those conversations in terms of providing valuable information related to dental health, and is it convenient for those they are engaging online.

Twins, Teeth, and Tickets

Metro Dental has a distinction of being the provider of dental services for the Major League Baseball Minnesota Twins. Kind of a good thing considering they have a new stadium, Target Field, and are in the running for a playoff berth (at the time of this writing : ) ).

Metro Dental is running a social contest using #twiceaday to get people to brush for two minutes twice a day, and tweet about it. Then there is a drawing for Twins tickets. It’s the perfect tie in to A) their unique position of being the Twins’ dental care organization and B) getting people involved in an activity tied to dental health. I must admit brushing twice a day for two minutes is not convenient for me, but the contest was fun and reinforced a number of attributes about Metro Dental.

For those that like numbers this contest generated:

88% increase in Facebook fans from May 1 through July 1. In large part Metro Dental attributes this to the #twiceaday campaign and Facebook advertising (jump from 246 fans on May 1 to 462 fans on July 1–and still rising).
more than 50 tweets using the #twiceaday hash tag and growing it’s a summer long program.
11 blog posts by local mommy bloggers about the #twiceaday campaign in May and June.63 total comments on those 11 blog posts in May and June.

In this podcast Candee Wolf and April Meyer discuss the details of the #twiceaday contest and their observations of social media in this health care setting.

Disclosure: I did win tickets but I credit that to my exceptional daughter who made me brush #twiceaday

Social Media Major Part of Twin Cities Nurses Contract PR Strategy

Albert Maruggi — Mon, 24 May 2010 18:58:04 +0000

Twin Cities Nurses Approve One Day Strike

In the Twin Cities of Minneapolis and St. Paul, Minnesota, hospitals and the Minnesota Nurses Union are in the middle of contract negotiations. The public relations strategies of this contact negotiation have two different perspectives, much the same way that each side has their position on contact talks.

The union has aggressively used social media implementing Facebook, Twitter and a separate blog on the Word Press Minnesota Nurses blog platform in addition to their website. The Twin Cities hospitals formed a coalition of six hospital systems representing about 22 hospitals that has taken a more traditional approach toward its communications.

In this podcast we talk with John Nemo, director of public relations for the Minnesota Nurses Association about their use of social media. We focused solely on the strategy and tactics used during this labor negotiation which is still an ongoing story. This interview was conducted on Friday, May 21 just after the Twin Cities Minnesota nurses voted to approve a one day strike.

The criteria of many healthcare related labor negotiations have common themes including:

a public timeline,
naturally occurring news cycles based on deadlines,
potentially wide impact across the consumer population,
emotional connection to both individuals and communities, and,
the potential angle of generating public sentiment that could impact either the negotiations and/or other entities such as legislators.

I highlight this to give context to the environments where I believe social media can be implemented.

I also have a request to interview the hospital coalition and thought it best to do that as a separate interview and podcast. For the purpose of putting the hospitals’ public presence into perspective I have talked with individuals familiar with the issue. The lack of social media participation on their part perhaps indicates the coalition’s desire not feed the emotional embers which are inherent in most contract negotiations. In the case of management vs. labor the chances of generating as many individuals “liking” a management page is not a fair comparison and therefore may give a perception that has little basis in fact. Are coworkers of nurses going to publicly “Like” management’s position Facebook page even if they agree with that position? Unlikely.

There are however other examples of hospitals taking the contract discussion public to be transparent about the running of a hospital. An example is Paul Levy of CEO of Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center who spoke out openly when that hospital was in negotiations with the Service Employees International Union SEIU

I hope to explore the Twin Cities hospitals position further. Follow me on Twitter @albertmaruggi for updates on this story. What are your thoughts about taking health care related labor negotiations public?

Cancer Inspires Mission to Help Others And Improve Healthcare

Albert Maruggi — Sat, 15 May 2010 16:17:14 +0000

There is nothing like a personal connection to cancer to inspire and motivate. You’ve heard the story a hundred times, experienced it myself and each time it is different. The story goes soemthing like, this; a family member becomes ill with a diease, one that impacts many, and dramatically changes the direction you take in life.

The interesting angle in this story is it connects Lake Nokomis in Minneapolis, Minnesota on June 5 to India. The world is getting smaller by the minute. In 2008, Gangadhar Sulkunte was touched by lymphoma, cancer of the lymphnodes, when his father was diagnosised the with diease. Sulkunte’s father is from India and was living there when he was diagnosed, Gangadhar Sulkunte lives in the US. The logistics created an international health care information exchange and treatment being done across the globe, an increasingly common event in the networked world. His father would show doctors and other patients about information he gained from the web which further increased the connectedness of this community.

As a result of his father’s experience with the treatment of lymphoma and the grief of his father’s passing two years ago, the entrepentuer and IT project manager side of Sulkunte became inspired. He plugged into the Lymphoma Research Foundation and dedicated his energies to raising money for Lymphomathon, a non-copetitive 5K walk around Lake Nokomis June 5. According to their website “The walk is in honor and in memory of those whose lives have been touched by lymphoma. Funds raised by participants will support the Foundation’s mission of eradicating lymphoma and serving those touched by this disease.”

Sulkunte has a large goal of raising $25,000 and a long way to go to get there so incentives and social media is his path. To help reach his goal, he is holding a raffle among those who donate $25 or more. They will be entered into a raffle for an ipod touch. He even rewards those who are short on cash but are able to spread the link love on Twitter. Those who tweet #curelymphoma and URL http://bit.ly/curelymphoma are entered into a raffle to win an ipod Shuffle. That’s impressive!

Developed by Gangadhar Sulkunte and 4thmain Software

On to the entrepeneur aspect of Sulkunte’s life turn. He created hlogapp, an iPhone application to help individuals record health data, and daily activities that impact health care such as exercise and nutrition. The result, when the data is entered regularly, is a more comprehensive view of a person’s activites as it potentially relates to their health. This active participation is becoming known as the quantified self a state of being more aware of your activities and the world around you.

We discuss in the podcast some of the advantages of being in tune with your daily routines and recording them. When you see a single data point, say a cough or an itching sensation, you think nothing of it. If however, you record it, and reflect on the data, then over time you may see a pattern that has medical implications. Sulkunte’s belief is that these patterns are a key to knowledge and early signs of health maintenance.

All in medicine agree that early detection is a major factor for cancer survival. The Hlogapp is availale from Sulkunte’s company 4th Main Software on the iPhone App Store.

Perhaps this work and others like it will create a healthier society which in itself is a reinforcing community that is more atuned to its surroundings and each other.

Thanks to Ward Tongen, a health care marketing consultant for introducing me to Gangadhar and dedicating his talents to assisting the Hlog App project.

Diabetes Innovation Using Crowd Sourcing

Albert Maruggi — Mon, 12 Apr 2010 17:51:20 +0000

Diabetes Mine and Amy Tenderich is at it again, pushing the envelope for diabetes patients and in social media. They are in the middle of the their third annual Design Challenge, a recognition program for ideas, prototype, and new products for meeting the needs of diabetes patients.

It’s a fascinating way medical device companies, physicians, clinicians and regulators are learning how to keep pace with the speed of communications. It’s also a way the innovators with a product are getting the attention of venture capital firms and angel investors right at the point, the community of users, in this case the community of diabetes patients.

If you have a product in its early stages or even a design idea, check out the Diabetes Mine 2010 Design Challenge and submit your product or service before April 30, 2010. Winners will get cash, expert consultation, a bunch more, the video explains more.

Last year’s Diabetes Mine Design Challenge winners included an iPhone application to monitor glucose levels, a teddy bear with diabetes to help children learn about their condition and how to treat it, and a retractable insulin pump tubing. From the complex to the simple, all ideas that address the daily needs of the diabetes patient.

Tenderich is an innovator and visionary as she has helped this community come together for a wide spectrum of benefits and progress. They are there for support, product feedback, real-life advice, and an active forum for all aspects of what living with diabetes means day in and day out.

Congratulations Amy and all of the members of the Diabetes Mine community.

Moving Hospitals From Social to Strategy

Guest Author — Sun, 28 Mar 2010 05:39:02 +0000

Guest Post by Shawn Zehnder Lea

A Conversation with Shawn Zehnder Lea

Hospitals engaging in social media have consistently grown in numbers of late. (Ed Bennett, who tracks hospitals using social media, saw his numbers jump by 79 in just six weeks time in January of this years.) Fear of HIPAA, lawsuits, and a lack of message control kept some hospitals out of social media for too long. But a recent Greystone.net report shows that even though social media is growing in hospitals, social media strategy is not growing as quickly – only one in three had a social media plan in place.

In addition to gradually supporting service lines through social media and improving communications with communities, hospitals need to get ready for the rise of what is being termed the “e-patient” and create and adjust social media plans accordingly. Currently, many hospitals are talking through social media channels but they are not necessarily listening well. And they are not alone.

I did a presentation in Virginia last fall about hospitals using social media and the rise of consumerism in health care and how that will affect hospital social media. I had a roster of the hospitals attending, so, of course, the first thing I did was visit their social media sites.

On this one particular day I looked, I noticed that @CarilionClinic seemed to be responding to a patient. I went to @SwiftFalcon’s site and saw that he or she was confused about a bill. I don’t know how it all ended, but I was impressed that an actual patient was actually helped on an actual social media site. It took three days, but, still, I was impressed. Because most often what I saw were press releases. The same ones that were on the corporate Web site. The same ones sent to local media, just now on Twitter. And Facebook. And blogs. And wherever else they could be posted.

In an eMarketer.com report in July of 2009, U.S. executives named the top two reasons (both at 81% in importance) that they saw value in social media: enhancing relationships with customers/clients and building our company’s brand. I didn’t see “distributing press releases” anywhere in the top five.

In the coming year, I hope to see more hospital social media sites used for customer service, patient education, crisis communication, nurse recruitment, mobile access to information, and community and physician outreach. I hope to see help lines online and communities of patients forming. (And, yes, press releases on Employees of the Month and the latest award the hospital or a hospital department has won.)

I hope to see more social – and more strategy.

Shawn Zehnder Lea is the vice president of marketing and public relations for the Mississippi Hospital Association. This post reflects her views and is not necessarily the views of the Mississippi Hospital Association.

Taking The Bull by The Horns

Guest Author — Sat, 20 Feb 2010 00:40:08 +0000

Guest Post by Colleen McGuire

A Conversation with Colleen McGuire
When I was 10 years old, my mother was diagnosed with advance stage malignant melanoma. While my parents didn’t disclose the severity of her illness at the time, my grade-school intellect could tell the prognosis was not good.

Almost immediately mom did what she does best – took the bull by the horns. She started reading a mountain of books. She changed her diet. She talked to experts in the field. And she became an advocate to others suffering from the same disease. She wasn’t sure how long she was going to live, but she wasn’t going to let cancer bring her down without a fight.

Mom’s determination to survive and manage her health care gave her a new lease on life. Ten years passed. However, as the doctor’s warned, the cancer came back full-bore. We braced ourselves once again for the unthinkable. This time mom didn’t have much to take by the horns since she had changed her lifestyle previously. But the one thing 10 years did give her was technology.

Before Facebook and Twitter, we had chat rooms and bulletin boards. In 1994 mom joined the Melanoma Patients’ Information Page. While it looks archaic today, it is still one of the top resources for melanoma advocacy and information. It is also one of mom’s bookmarked sites she visits daily, now as a 27-year survivor of metastasized stage IV melanoma.

There is a lot of chatter today about health care accountability. Who is responsible? What is the difference between accountability and personal freedom? And my personal favorite, “Well, that’s what insurance is for!”

Googling for health information is one step of patient accountability. However, to be 100 percent accountable for your health care, you have to be engaged. I can read thousands of reports about how bad fatty foods are, but when I’m staring down a jar of peanut butter, those reports are somehow forgotten.

Weight Watchers and Alcoholics Anonymous got it right a long time ago. Pulling people together for meetings as a community creates a higher success rate than those who go it alone. With the wide world of social media, shouldn’t health care accountability grow and prosper in this new age? Think about the places where you can participate in an online community to get information and support on healthy lifestyle topics, exercise, clinical studies – the possibilities are endless.

When accountability is incorporated into health care, there can be a domino effect.

Patient gets information.
Patient talks to others with similar interest.
Patient takes steps to change lifestyle.
Patient lifestyle improves.
Patient talks to other about improvement.
Patient health care cost slowly decreases as wellness increases

Not sure where to start? Jump into the conversation. Just listening is okay too.

Dialogue4Health – interaction for health professionals and community leadership

MyHealthyLifestyle – promoting wellness awareness

WegoHealth – empowering health advocates to help others

LetsMove – recent healthy lifestyle campaign launched by Michelle Obama

You can also find a multitude of social media circles on Facebook and Twitter. Still not sure? Ask your health care provider if they know of a local online community that is talking health accountability.

The bottom line – my mother started using social media 16 years ago to get the answers she needed and find a community that understood exactly what she was going through. The conversation has already started. You just have to jump in.

Colleen is Vice President of Communications at IHC Health Solutions, She is the organizer of #stptweetup and can be found on Twitter @colleenmick

The Serious Phase of Social Media and Health Care

Albert Maruggi — Sun, 17 Jan 2010 21:56:38 +0000

At times I have been critical of health care organizations jumping on Twitter or other social media platforms just to check a box on a list or react to a senior manager’s question/suggestion “what are we doing about Facebook and Twitter?” The marketing or PR departments of hospitals took on the assignment to be responsive or perhaps even to learn what’s all the buzz about.

Some used the medium less, if at all, to engage patients or the media, but as a free distribution channel. That’s fine, as one hospital marketer told me, marketing is viewed as a cost center by many hospital managers. The more we can do to lower costs and stay out of controversy the better. That last part, stay out of controversy translates for some to not being social. We can debate whether this is a head in the sand approach, but for a moment, let’s just feel the pain of a resources stretched marketer in an economy with 10 percent unemployment.

There is a place for health care facilities to participate in social communities, especially in the communities of their core medical specialties. There is more supporting evidence on the horizon for those marketers and PR to engage. Widgets, information based on an RSS feed that can be used on other websites or incorporated in customized news pages, are increasing in their use and availability.

A word of caution while there are many widgets, and for sure some with tens of thousands of downloads, there are also many without many followers or downloads. Still others come under the category of medical news and not treatment. Nonetheless the overall point is there are plenty of ways to be creative with health information and communities.

There are more than 5000 widgets in the health category on Widgetbox with some being downloaded more than 100,000 times.

There are around 2000 iPhone apps in the medical category and while the Android operating system has a fraction of the number of medical applications, it is quickly catching up giving consumers and health care practitioners plenty of choices.

In general these numbers give rise to getting involved socially, but there are other factors that make social media for health care a complex issue, especially for health care providers. Those factors include geography, profitability, type of patient and their health care coverage, and resources to generate content.

What’s your take? Are you a health care provider waiting for the right time to dive into social media, or is it something that is not appropriate for your organization? Why?

Sample of Social Media Tactics for Health Care

Albert Maruggi — Thu, 07 Jan 2010 06:03:24 +0000

I gave a presentation a few months ago to the Minnesota Medical Group Management Association. The attendees were primarily from clinics looking to evaluate whether social media should be a part of health care marketing. The definitive answer is maybe.

I know, I know everyone you talk to says you have to be on (insert shiny somewhat new object), however, I also know how difficult it is to produce content. If not producing content, then participating in communities also is not something to check a box and move on.

This summary of my presentation covers some of the considerations for clinics and hospitals. I also am joined by Anne Toal of Reach Local who highlights potential search tactics that may well be effective for health care providers. It is tied into the high percentage of web searches for health issues in a specific geography around your facility.

On the Brink of Health Care Reform

Albert Maruggi — Mon, 28 Dec 2009 17:17:45 +0000

This candid discussion on the December 27 Meet the Press highlights the budget pressures of the health care reform bills as they are currently crafted in the House and Senate. At the very least, this is a measure to get more of the 40 million uninsured covered. It also attempts to address the unfairness in pre-existing conditions especially among children.

But for all of the positive aspects, there are serious reservations about whether there is true “reform” in improving quality of care and the payment system. It is a wonderful overview of the context in which health care reform was created.

Visit msnbc.com for breaking news, world news, and news about the economy

Health Care is Social

Albert Maruggi — Tue, 22 Dec 2009 22:14:11 +0000

I learned of this video by reading the blog of ePatient Dave. This video is an acceptance speech from Dr. Amy Ship of Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center who received the compassionate caregiver award from the Kenneth B. Schwarz Center. Dr. Ship touches on the smallest gestures having the biggest impact, be they negative or positive, which is why hearing this will impact your life.

Because we have short attention spans, us Americans, we can never get enough of these moments of inspiration. Perhaps that is why we look forward to the bursts of energy that chime and vibrate our mobile devices from being tweeted, or updated. Each one has the potential to be a moment of kindness, acknowledgement, and encouragement.

I’m drawing on two issues here 1) the compassion necessary for quality health care and 2) the social need to build a bond with patients, their aliments, and those with whom they relate with. It is a reason I recommend that health care organizations participate in aliment communities not as a single one-way resource, but as an equal member sharing knowledge and learning of community member issues. This exchange is akin to Dr. Ship’s remarks in this video about the doctor looking back.

Thank you ePatient Dave for sharing this video.

I don’t mean to be critical of health care organizations that use social media to distribute their news release headlines or other tactical uses. That is a fine and efficient means to “get the word out.” There is, however, a much deeper application that will impact the “culture of care” in an organization. This is where social applications are an extension of human compassion among health care givers and their recipients.