PRSA: Social Media and the Health Care Industry

(Live blogging from the PRSA International Conference in San Diego)

Now with Betsy Raymond Stevenson, of RaymondStevenson Healthcare Communications, and Steve Woodruff of Impactiviti for Integrating New/Social Media into Your Health Care Organizations Public Relations: How to Satisfy your Regulatory and Legal Departments and Still Be Credible.

Very long title (might win the award for that) – but it sums up the main issues facing this key industry and the barriers that exist.

Steve doesn’t prefer to use ’social’ when describing this channel – it is ‘Networked Communications’. It’s not just a ‘tactic’ – it is the way we are going to communicate, just simply be the assumed air that we breath.

SW: Remember that – thought-leaders can now be everywhere, and from every background.’ (and as Amanda Chapel added via Twitter ‘that’s why they no longer have value.’)

BRS: Action with transparency builds trust – and trust drives implementation. Put in the time to build trust with regulatory and legal. – build their trust by engaging early and consistently.

Discussing Levels of Engagement

Preclinical

• Search your company, name, brands, issues to establish a baseline of who is saying what, where, why

Phase I

• BSR & SW: Get out there visibly – but with primarily one-way outreach. If you are disabling the social responsiveness SAY IT. Be transparent. (It’s hard for me to think of this as a ’social media’ effort since they are advocating one-way with no engagement back. But for conservative companies this may help build a comfort level and enable them to engage in a truer way as part of the next step)
• If you are starting out – and putting out information through different channels – do so with information people are already seeking. Top 3 main issues consumers search for online: affordable healthcare, preventing disease, chronic health problems.
• Case study: Johnson & Johnson. When they first went interactive they went safe – a blog on the company’s history and locale.

• Case study: Workshop attendee from JFK Medical Center in Palm Beach County discussing how webcasting, social networking by doctors and outreach education by her hospital covered in today’s Miami Herald. (The education prior to surgery sounds just like the platform that Idaho’s Unity Medical is rolling out – where digital communication applications will enable more expedient health-related decisions and promote an increase in beneficial interventions.)

Conveniently – Ragan Communications Ed Bennett’s Found In Cache blog just put out this list of ‘List of Hospitals Using Social Media’ Now the question is, what does ‘using’ mean in this case for these 400 institutions. Here’s the breakdown on where they are – no word on what they are doing’
202 YouTube Channels
219 Facebook pages
297 Twitter Accounts
48 Blogs

Phase IIA

External blog – such as a company history

Phase IIB

ADHD moms, CML Earth (Novatis), Twitter (Novo Nordisk branded campaign)

Phase III

Twitter (B), External Blog (J&JBTW)

We didn’t make it through the whole presentation due to time constraints and all of the attendee sharing & conversation, but its available at Social Media & the Health Care Industry

And head to this Impactiviti page for all of Steve’s white papers, slideshows, podcasts, links – generally inside his brain.

One last resource in the grand world of Health Care & Social Media – Lee Aase of the Mayo Clinic.

- Jess