In Iowa, Knoxville Hospital and Clinics was listed among the best hospital blogs.  The blog penned by Todd Linden, CEO of Grinnell Regional Medical Center, is also listed, and so is IHA’s blog. 

As for Nurseblogger…well, we’re not exactly sure who or what this is, although it seems to have something to do with helping nurses earn their bachelor’s degrees.  But they do seem to know health care and good hospital-related blogging when they see it.

• Mercy Medical Center – Sioux City is on Twitter and Facebook
• Humboldt Hospital has a blog
• Pella Regional Health Center is on Twitter
• Crawford County Memorial Hospital is on Twitter
• Great River Medical Center is on Twitter
• Story County Medical Center is on Twitter

This latest wave brings a flurry of tweets, increasing our totals to 13 hospitals in Iowa using Twitter.

How do you see hospitals being able to use social media?

Are these hospitals doing things right? Could they be doing things better? If your hospital was on Twitter, Facebook or somewhere else, what would you expect of them?

IHA is interested in hearing your thoughts and I will continue updating the list of Iowa hospitals using social media to keep everyone informed.

• Iowa Health – Des Moines, Des Moines, has launched three pages on Facebook:
  • John Stoddard Cancer Center
  • Blank Children’s Hospital
  • Live Well progran
• Knoxville Hospital and Clinics, Knoxville, launched a blog and is on Twitter

Of nine Iowa hospitals implementing some form of social media, Twitter seems to be the dominant tool for getting started. Facebook pages come in at a close second and hospital blogs are third.

What do you want to know about social media?

I will continue updating IHA’s list of Iowa hospitals using social media to keep everyone abreast of hospital efforts, but what else would you like to know about social media?

Part of my responsibility at IHA is to be an educator in marketing web strategy, so I’d love to address any questions or concerns you may have.

Survey respondents report that the top benefit of social media marketing is gaining attention for the business, and with 81% of all marketers indicating that their social media efforts have generated that exposure, those efforts appear to be paying off in a big way.

Improving traffic and growing marketing lists is the second major benefit, according to the study, followed by building new partnerships. The study also found more than half of participants reported that a major benefit of social media marketing is the resultant rise in search engine rankings that often comes with increased efforts.

Twitter, blogs, LinkedIn and Facebook

The top four social media tools being used by all marketers are Twitter, blogs, LinkedIn and Facebook, respectively. Twitter holds the top spot prominently with 86% of respondents saying they are using it.

Numbers for Twitter have not penetrated quite so far in the heath care marketing world, but a report from Ed Bennet says that there are 160 hospitals (out of 250 he is tracking) with Twitter accounts. The next most used social media tool  by hospitals is YouTube, then Facebook and blogs.

Bennett is the manager of web strategy at University of Maryland Medical System and maintains the “Hospital Social Network List” on his personal blog.

Iowa hospitals are also engaged in social media, Twitter

To our knowledge there are five hospitals in Iowa using at least one of the social media tools above, and four of whom are using Twitter.

Similar to Bennett’s list, we’ve developed our own for tracking Iowa hospitals using social media. This list can be used as a reference to see what others are doing in the space. If you’re doing this stuff and not on the list, please post in the comments below with links to your initiatives.

You can also follow the Iowa Hospital Association on Twitter as @iowahospital. We post links to relevant Iowa stories, share health care industry resources, communicate with other health care professionals and promote the people, places and achievements of Iowa hospitals.

If you have questions about any of the statistics above or about how your hospital can be leveraging social media in your communication strategy, feel free to send in your questions or add them as comments on this post.

Being the only hospital 100% open in Fargo has led to the need for quick decision-making in regards to the dissemination of information, especially while they’ve still got an entire hospital to run.

The Decision to Let Someone Else Handle Communications

To best handle their crisis situation, Innovis called upon the help of Russell Herder, an agency based in Minneapolis, to get their messages out to the public. Carol Russell, the firm’s CEO, has managed the social media program put in place for Innovis since the crisis began.

Carol and her team have developed an extensive network of traditional and social media outlets that allow them to transmit critical announcements from Innovis as they happen.

The Innovis Health blog is used to keep the public up-to-date on service access and to communicate with families throughout the region, while the hospital’s Twitter account (@innovishealth) is being used to provide real-time announcements to cell phones and computers, however users should decide to receive them.

If you visit the main Innovis Health website, there is a large callout front-and-center driving users looking for critical announcements to visit the blog. Down the right-hand column of the blog are near instantaneous updates from the hospitals Twitter feed, keeping visitors constantly updated on the situation.

The hospital Twitter account has 272 followers, including the American Red Cross, the West Fargo Pioneer, FEMA and Minnesota Public Radio, which goes to show that relevant parties are paying attention to Innovis’ updates.

Most intriguing to me is the fact that all of these crisis communications are being generated by a team located an entire state away.

“[T]hese tools make it easy for us to manage communications remotely. We’re based in Minneapolis and our client is in Fargo, but we’re able to fully assist them and not be in the way,” Carol mentions. “By creating this blog we are able to take control of the message. We don’t need to rely on the ability to reach preoccupied local media to publish updates, and there are no concerns about the message getting garbled.”

Using Social Media to Enhance Communication

According to Kris Olson, vice president of marketing, quality and physician services at Innovis Health, using social media to enhance communication with the public is a natural extension of the organization’s service commitment.

“In difficult times such as this, it takes extraordinary cooperation and professionalism on the part of our team. But open, ongoing communication with our greater community is also essential. Babies are being born. Evacuation helicopters are landing on our helipad. Regional and national service organizations have relocated their services to our facility. This is a continuously evolving situation and we need to reach out any way we can.”

When you frame it like that, it makes it hard for anyone to argue over the value of social media. The important lesson to be realized is that these tools are continuing to grow in popularity amongst the public and that not utilizing them is doing a disservice to the level of connectedness a hospital can provide.

Also important to note is Olson’s comment that “using social media to enhance communication … is a natural extension of the organization’s service commitment.” These tools are part of a new hospital marketing and communications toolbelt which many simply haven’t taken the time to try on.

Hospitals Still Slow to Adopt

According to Ed Bennett, manager of web strategy at University of Maryland Medical System, hospital use of social networking tools has been a relatively recent phenomenon, though the tools have been available for years. Bennet’s continually growing Hospital Social Network List, which documents hospitals using such communication, identifies 117 hospitals nationwide on Twitter and 22 with blogs.

Of the 5,708 registered hospitals in the US (source: American Hospital Association), that still leaves plenty of room for health care communications to catch up.

Does your crisis communications plan include using social media? Have you already implemented tools like this as part of your ongoing communications? What questions do you have about how these tools can impact your ability to deliver a message?