1If you’re someone who has heard about a social networking tool called Twitter but have no idea what it is, today is your chance to learn. Over 150 hospitals are currently using Twitter as an additional channel in their communication strategy, plus you’ll find state hospital associations (we are @iowahospital), doctors and other health care professionals using it on a daily basis to share information.
Tweetcamp II
Lee Aase, Manager of Syndication and Social Media for Mayo Clinic, will be hosting a free, hour-long training session today, Thursday, April 23, at 3pm CST.
This session, Tweetcamp II, is the second iteration of this course, based on the immense success of the first Tweetcamp training hosted last week.
Tweetcamp II will cover some of the same material as Tweetcamp I, but will have expanded examples of practical applications and case studies, particularly related to health care.
This course was primarily drawn up for Mayo Clinic employees, but will also be available via live webcast due to the number of interested participants. ABC’s Good Morning America ran a video story after the first training titled, “Why Doctors are Tweeting During Surgery,” which also profiles Twitter’s use in hospitals across the U.S.
How to Attend Today’s Training
- Leave a comment on the original Tweetcamp II post with your name and organizational affiliation. Your email address will not be published, but is simply needed to verify your submission.
- Follow Lee’s “3 Steps to Preparing for Tweetcamp II“:
- Sign up for a Twitter account. If you need assistance, go through Twitter 102: Creating an Account.
- Log into the #tweetcamp2 “room” in TweetChat using your Twitter username. Post a message announcing your plans to attend Tweetcamp II and include the following link: http://bit.ly/q9hgu
- Watch the Mayo Clinic Music Fun video on Sharing Mayo Clinic.
- Access the live webcast beginning at 2:55 pm CST to follow along with Lee’s presentation.
Following these steps will help you understand some of the power of Twitter. Tweetcamp II will give you even more hands-on experience, plus case studies for how it is already being used in health care.
Once the session is completed, don’t forget that you can follow the Iowa Hospital Association on Twitter as @iowahospital.
Update: the slides for today’s presentation are below.
As the community of Fargo, North Dakota continues to be pummeled by historic flood levels, local hospital Innovis Health is putting their crisis communications plan to the test.
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?
