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?
