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Recently the Mayo Clinic launched its Center for Social Media and announced the names of 13 well-suited social media stars to sit on its volunteer external advisory board. An additional 12 people will be chosen from nominations and applications. This post is my application.
I’ve been writing about social media in healthcare since I read Phil Bauman’s groundbreaking “140 Healthcare Uses for Twitter” almost two years ago. The exciting potential for social media in healthcare settings is also cause for apprehension among administrators and clinical staff. What once was so hidden, so cloistered, so proprietary, so inscrutable is now emerging into the sunlight and is becoming collaborative, transparent, open, consumerist and available. It’s refreshing and scary.
I started my career in healthcare as a temp receptionist in an orthopedic office over 25 years ago. I have been a consultant, a private practice manager of small practices, a Chief Operating Officer of a very large practice. I’ve worked with physicians and care providers of all kinds in settings both rural and urban, for-profit and not-for-profit, and I have done most everything in healthcare except serve on the Mayo Clinic Center for Social Media Advisory Board. (hint)
For the talent portion of my program, I will be interviewing myself live.
Q: Tell us something interesting about yourself.
A: I was Butler County (PA) Junior Miss of 1976 (a brains pageant with some physical fitness thrown in for good measure.)
Q: What is your greatest regret?
A: I wish I had taken touch typing in high school.
Q: Are you a cat person or dog person?
A: A cat person but I get along well with dogs.
Q: Favorite charity?
A: My brother is a missionary in Ukraine and his organization (www.muchhope.org) helps disadvantaged children with food, clothing, healthcare and education.
Q: How do feel about shameless plugs?
A: I find them tacky, but ultimately necessary.
Q: What social media apps do you use?
A: Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn, YouTube, GoAnimate, Wellsphere, WordPress Blog
Q: What is your favorite social media app for healthcare?
A: Ummm. Pass.
Q: Why you?
A: Why not me? I’m a patient, a mom, a wife, a healthcare manager, a social media groupie, a blogger, a reader, a thinker, a cartoonist, a learner, a writer, an observer of life. Every board needs me.
Q: What is the future of social media in healthcare?
A: Mobile, for sure, and I think QR codes have tremendous promise.
Q: What is your favorite social media app for healthcare?
A: Facebook. The potential is unlimited.
Q: Last question: “healthcare.” One word or two?
A: One.
NOTE: If my beloved readers wish to support my appointment to the MCCSM Advisory Board, please Tweet about me with the hashtag #mccsc, leave a comment on the MCCSM blog here, or send an email of support to socialmediacenter@mayo.edu. Thank you!
A QR (Quick Response or Quick Read) Code is a two-dimensional matrix/bar code. Users hold their phone up to the code displayed on a sign, in a book, on a computer screen, tv, or almost anywhere. The phone camera snaps the code and takes the user to a website or video with more information – no typing needed – just point and click.
QR Codes are most common in Japan where they are currently the most popular type of two dimensional codes. (definition courtesy of Mashapedia = wikipedia and Mashable)
- Billboards advertising hospitals and medical groups will have QR codes so travelers can get more information about facilities or get directions to the closest Emergency Department, Urgent Care or family practice.
- Television advertising for pharmaceuticals will have QR codes so viewers can get more information on the spot.
- Healthcare facilities will have QR codes for all types of information and videos that providers and nurses will instruct patients to scan based on their health problems.
- Magazines and newspapers will have QR codes that readers can scan to get health information and health product coupons.
- Scanning QR codes when exercising or purchasing healthy foods will get you reward points with your health plan, your doctor or your employer.
- Comparison of foods that you should or should not buy in grocery stores based on your individual health problems will be easy when you scan the food’s QR codes.
- Caregivers will scan QR codes to receive information and videos for caring for their loved one at home.
- When purchasing over the counter medications, vitamins and supplements, you will scan the QR to make sure the medication isn’t contraindicated for any prescription medication you are taking.
- Scanning the QR code on food or cleaning products will let you know if they contain anything that you are allergic to.
- At health fairs, attendees will scan QR codes for more information on health topics and your facility and services.
- Disposable diapers will each come with a unique QR code that Moms (and babies) can scan to get childcare tips, games, songs and medical advice.
- Urgent Care facilities and Emergency Rooms will have QR codes for instant access to wait times.
- QR codes in healthcare facilities will let users download helpful mobile healthcare applications like those that help you control your chronic illness or lose weight.
- In print advertising for physicians, potential patients will scan the QR code to view the physicians talking about their background, their specialties and their desire to have you as a new patient!
- Referring patients to facilities or specialty practices will be much easier when patients scan the QR code for the referral and receive information, instructions and directions to the appointment.
- Healthcare facilities will give out t-shirts and carrying bags promoting their services and the QR codes on them will spread the word to others. (Yes, people will scan each others’ t-shirt codes!)
- Patients taking home holter monitors and CPAPs will be able to scan the QR code on the machine to get a “how-to” video on using it.
- Patients taking home sample medications from physician offices will have QR codes on the bag to scan to remember how they are to take the samples.
- Temporary tatoo QR codes will identify those patients who won’t wear identifying bracelets, have dementia, or tend to wander away.
- Hospital patients will scan the menu broadcast on their TV to order their daily meals.
- If you are going to be late to your doctor’s appointment, you will scan a QR code to email an alert to the office that you are on the way. (Wait, maybe that’s too easy!)
- Pharmacies will have QRs loaded with prescription prices by insurance company plan on their website so providers can compare different drugs and chose the best drug for the patient at the best price.
I have been getting lots of questions lately about finding jobs in healthcare management. The healthcare field is very mobile right now and many managers inside the field and in other fields are looking for advice on the best way to make a move.
In addition to making sure they have the right skills and experience, job seekers also need to be sure that their digital reputations are sterling, and if not, need to make the move to correct them. In fact, every single person reading this post should check on their digital footprint and see what the web has to say. You never know when an employment change will suddenly be in your future.
What if you don’t show up on the web radar at all because you’re not on Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn and Google finds no matches for your name? That says you’re not in the know, not networking, not sharing and definitely not computer-savvy. Here’s an excellent SlideShare presentation by Susan P. Joyce of job-hunt.org that gives job seekers (and truly, each one of us in healthcare is a job seeker, whether we admit it to ourselves or not) a gold mine of information about creating or correcting your online presence.
Image by The Library of Virginia via Flickr
Sometimes a job just gets a little old, and even the best employees need a little something to get them re-engaged and excited again. Try one of the ideas below at your practice and let me know in the comments the ways you keep your staff energized and engaged!
1. Provide a career track and offer multiple levels of learning jobs. For instance, break the receptionist job into steps (see below) and set time lines for attaining those goals. You may want several steps to be accomplished at 90-days, more at 6-months, and more at 12-months. There may be monetary awards, honor awards, or qualifications for other acknowledgements.
- Pre-registering patients by phone – demographics
- Making appointments & mini-register for new patients
- Registering patients face-to-face – demographics
- Understanding insurance plans and registering their insurance
- Taking photo ID or taking photos and explaining the Red Flags Rule
- Collecting co-pays
- Answering basic patient questions
- Answering advanced patient questions
- Reviewing the financial policy with patients
- Reviewing the Privacy Policy with patients.
2. Offer certifications and credentials – support staff emotionally, time-wise and financially so they can attend face-to-face or online courses.
3. Offer specific responsibilities and the title of lead person for that responsibility – don’t assume you know what staff are or are not capable of – they might surprise you!
4. Meet every 6 months or every quarter to set goals. A job can be a drag if there’s nothing new to learn or to accomplish.
5. Set up process improvement teams to work on problems that everyone complains about – give them the responsibility to come up with solutions and try them out.
6. Involve them in social media marketing of the practice. Make sure they understand your social media plan ( you do have a plan, don’t you?), give them guidelines to work within and let them work on your website, your blog, and your Facebook page.
7. Install a wiki (many are free) and have them work on loading all the practice knowledge into the wiki. Have different staff responsible for different parts of the wiki and set goals for adding all the information that runs your practice every day.
8. “Walk a Mile in My Shoes” – this is also great for getting the clinical and administrative staff to understand each other better. Have the staff shadow each other and take turns seeing parts of the practice they don’t know much about. I recently participated in this at my hospital and shadowed a nurse (and asked a million questions) for about an hour. It was wonderful! I felt better equipped to work with my hospitalist service after having been on a patient floor for just a short time.
9. If you are a practice that receives referrals from others, have staff responsible for regularly touching base with staff from referring practices and asking how service can be improved. Teach staff about relationship building and remember that it’s the staff that often choose where the patient is referred to instead of the provider.
10. Have staff take turns going with you to meetings, seminars and local events where you represent the practice and introduce them to everyone.
11. Forward listserv discussions to employees and have them monitor the discussions and bring things to you that they want to know more about.
12. Encourage employees to become the practice expert in a payer, an employer, a referrer, a process or a protocol and help them learn about their topic by sending them information from the web or your professional organizations.
13. Have the staff put together an internal or external newsletter and help them with concepts of internal and external marketing.
With huge growth in 2009, social media is not just a passing trend used by online marketers; its a real, effective method of communicating ideas, sharing information and connecting with people across all age and socioeconomic groups. Healthcare, while slower to adopt the social media wave than other industries, is coming to realize the potential social media tools provide to develop connections with patients, potential patients, along with other physicians and healthcare leaders around the world.
What are some of the driving forces behind this explosion in popularity? One reason is that as consumers, were no longer trusting of advertising and we dont want to be marketed to, we want to be engaged, build a relationship, make the company earn our trust and hear our friends or familys review of their experiences. In fact, studies show that today, only 14% of people trust advertising, whereas 78% of people trust recommendations and referrals. Companies are using social media outlets to build relationships, trust and encourage recommendations and referrals from their engaged consumer base. As practice, hospital and physician growth are so strongly correlated to patient referral and recommendation volumes, it is only natural healthcare organizations look to social media outlets to continue to foster patient relationships and increase referral volumes.
As of February 2010, where is the healthcare industry in its adoption of this social media explosion? Larger organizations and health systems are utilizing the power to connect, share and engage their patients. While, on average, smaller private physician groups and individual physician offices are still slightly hesitant and dipping their toes in the social media pool cautiously. One can understand why healthcare professionals do need to take a more strategic approach to interacting and engaging patients online with potential HIPAA privacy issues and other challenges looming. However, with a carefully crafted social media strategy, many health organizations are realizing the benefits of becoming more accessible in their marketing and reaching out to inform, educate and build trust with patients. According to Ed Bennett (edbennet.org) hospitals are currently at a 53% adoption rate, with 336 Facebook pages, 430 Twitter Accounts, 254 YouTube Channels and 70 blogs. In total, 557 health systems are reported to be participating in some capacity with social media, with the term social media encapsulating many forms and tools, including Facebook, Twitter, YouTube, blogs, LinkedIn, Flickr, and a number of patient forums.
How are healthcare organizations using these tools effectively? Lets focus on the top three tools currently adopted and being utilized in the healthcare social media sector.
Facebook: Physician practices and health systems alike are using Facebook as a dynamic, community-based website. It has become a place where physicians and leaders can post timely, organic or professional videos to educate patients and also connect on a more personal level. As a valuable resource for health information sharing, many organizations are taking the embarrassment out of sensitive subject matter and addressing specific medical problems, questions and issues for patients. Also, introductions to staff members and tours of the facilities are assisting organizations with connecting with their patients outside the four walls of their office and building rapport before patients even arrive for their appointment. Practices are also encouraging patients to participate and engage on their site through discussions and contests. Private practitioners are more likely to start their social media strategy with just a Facebook Fan Page, while larger health systems and hospitals are embracing other social media tools in combination with Facebook in their initial strategy.
Twitter: Twitter is being adopted quickly by the larger health systems as a way to share information, publicize events like health screenings, fairs and clinics and also connect with other health organizations. I like to think of it as a public relations channel for these hospital and health systems. Whats great is that in short, 140 character or less tweets, these organizations are sharing a wealth of information to their patients and those patients are finding ways to access this health information and the system like never before. Overall the smaller, private practitioners are not as quick to adopt Twitter as they are a practice website or even Facebook, but many are starting to realize the benefits of utilizing this community as a way to share their expertise and knowledge, along with driving traffic to their websites.
YouTube: Healthcare organizations are using YouTube like their own, private television station that can be shared with millions of viewers across the world. Again, more popular amongst the larger health organizations, videos of procedures, interviews with clinicians, tours of new facilities and patient testimonials are being posted in a searchable, user-friendly manner to continue to enhance brand awareness, build trust and gain patient loyalty. This social media tool can be used much like Facebook, easing patient fears and answering tough or embarrassing questions. It can also give patients a visual insight into the facility so they know what to expect before arriving at an appointment or for a procedure. It can act as an online referral source, highlighting patients that have had outstanding experiences and are recommending that organization to over a billion of their closest friends and family online. YouTube is the second largest search engine and healthcare professionals are quickly utilizing its power to share and connect with patients.
The fact of the matter is that for all industries, including healthcare, social media is both a curse and a blessing. Patients, who are now consumers with choices, can post content and interact freely with their physicians and their hospitals, sharing both outstanding experiences and negative experiences. Many health professionals are worried about their vulnerability, but social media is real life, online. As 2010 progresses, youll be seeing more and more attention placed on social media by healthcare professionals and by the end of the year, it will be a necessity for organizations to be participating and engaging online, or be left out.
For those organizations still looking to test the waters, my best advice is to develop a clear and concise plan for your online activity. Think about your goals, who are you trying to reach and where are those patients connecting online? What resources do you have to allocate to this new marketing initiative? Will you keep your efforts in-house or look to a firm to help with the process? Who will manage this strategy once it has been developed? What legal implications must we bear in mind as we move forward to protect our patients privacy? These are some of the questions that must be asked before ever jumping into the real-life world of social media. Remember, your patients want to feel engaged and interact with you; they are not looking to be marketed to, promoted to, or sold to. They want real information that can assist them in making important health decisions, while getting to know you and why you care about them as a patient. Use social media tools as a way to connect with your patients outside your office and build lasting relationships, keeping you on the top of their mind. When you can make those types of connections with your patients and build loyalty, your organization will begin to see social media as an effective way to increase your referral and recommendation volumes.
Thanks to guest author Jamie Verkamp, Director, Growth and Development of (e)Merge whose tagline is “Helping Medical Practices Grow”. She can be reached by phone (816)326.8464 – OFFICE, (816)565.1657 – CELL, (816)474.0595 – FAX and can be reached electronically email | web | twitter | facebook.
I have been a fan of Chris Brogan’s for quite awhile now. He is a superstar on the social media landscape and I almost got to meet him once when I lived in Seattle (sigh.) Today I came across his post “5 Things That Small Businesses Should Do Now.” Many medical practices are small businesses (privately owned and operated, with 100 employees or less), but may have not considered any of these options.
Here are Chris’s suggestions and my commentary:
- Start a blog I cant think of any simpler website technology to start and master, and there are cheap and free platforms readily available. Why a blog? Because theyre easy to create, because theyre easy to update, because they encourage repeat visits, and because you can use them in many flexible ways.
My comment: Most practices have websites and it is easy to add a blog to a website. Some administrators and/or physicians would gladly take on a blog, and if not, there are some great writing professionals who can create and write a blog for you. Professional bloggers get to know your practice and your patient demographic and create a voice for your practice that uniquely fits you. A blog extends and enhances your relationship with existing and future patients. It’s all about the communication.
- Start listening People are talking about you. Find out where they are and who they are.
My comment: It has been hard for physicians to come to terms with the fact that patients are publicly rating them. In some cases, physicians are requiring consumers to sign gag orders before becoming patients. The truth is, patients will not be stifled and physicians need to monitor the bandwaves for commentary about them and take it seriously.
- Try Twitter OR Facebook Lets not rush things. Facebook has many more users, but its a bit harder to find customers, prospects, partners and colleagues. Twitter is easier to use and faster to connect with people, but there are far fewer users on there today. Ill let you choose. If you go with Facebook, make a personal account under your own name, and then start a fan page for your business.
My comment: Does this seem too far out? It’s not! At the very least, practices should be learning about the technology and preparing for the time when they will need to jump in. Businesses (who want customers) can no longer hold themselves aloof. You need to be part of the conversation, or at least know where/what the conversation is.
- Get the word out If youre going to spend time building these social sites, lets presume that you want more people to contact you and interact with you through them. Print business cards with the company name, and/or the request for people to join your fan page or follow you on Twitter.
My comment: Your website and your social sites should be on everything you print that patients take home or receive from you, and can also be communicated to patients via automated communication: appointment reminders, messages on hold, emails, and electronic newsletters.
- Try moving the needle now lets really get crazy. See if you can fill the place up with social-media minded folks. Okay, this wont work for every business, but dont be too quick to count out the idea. Lets try inviting them to a store-only special event, or lets give them a discount code. You know, the stuff you already know how to do. Any difference in the results? See if you can do some kind of really special one-day-only push, and what that brings to you.
My comment: This won’t work for every medical practice but it’s ideal for practices with elective services – plastic/cosmetic surgery, allergy, complementary & alternative medicine, sports performance, vision correction, cosmetic dental services, infertility treatment, etc.
I know many people are having trouble understanding how Twitter could be relevant to a medical practice. Here’s a list that might help.
1. Tweet patients when doctor is running late.
2. Tweet doctor when patient is running late.
3. Tweet staff to remind them of staff meeting Monday morning.
4. Tweet patients to remind them of appointment.
5. Tweet when physician is giving a talk somewhere.
6. Tweet patients that medical report is available.
7. Tweet patients to call to make next appointment for vaccine or treatment series.
8. Tweet patient to complete patient questionnaire so payer will process claim.
9. Tweet patients to remind about NPO, golitely, drink water before test.
10. Tweet staff to remind of lunch event at work (forget the brown bag or remember your potluck offering.)
11. Tweet patient that medical records are ready to be picked up or have been sent.
12. Tweet patients that auto payment will be drafted tomorrow.
13. Tweet patients to take meds (especially meds that change: z-pack, coumadin.)
14. Tweet staff to turn payroll in, managers to look over payroll.
15. Tweet lab tech to go to exam room # for lab work.
16. Tweet x-ray tech to go to exam room # to escort patient to x-ray.
17. Send notice to patients when new info is on website.
18. Tweet patient that earlier appointment is available when patient no-shows.
19. Order lunch for physicians.
20. Announce new services, physicians, locations.
21. Let patients know when flu shots are available.
22. Remind patients about drugs (interactions, refills, take meds.)
23. Remind patients to take blood sugar, blood pressure.
24. Alert patient ride that patient is ready for pickup.
25. Alert referring physician that new test reports are available for them via the web.
26.. Tweet staff to give them inclement weather update.
27. Tweet patients to remind them of support-group meetings.
28. Tweet patient that last payment in payment plan is less or more due to EOB notice.
29. Tweet patients about drug recall.
What great ideas do you have for Twitter?
