Twitter has certainly been my point of discovery around many topics, so I was really grateful last week when Bryan Vartabedian shared a great resource from Ed Bennett that I had never seen before. Bennett, who works in the University of Maryland Medical Center, has taken the time to compile a fantastic database of US hospitals and the different digital media that each uses.
Bennett has cataloged 730 different hospitals in this list, and the information sheds a good amount of light on the different reasons health centers are venturing into social media. Based on his data, here are five points to consider about hospitals and how they use these channels.
The Embrace of Twitter
Most of the growth surrounding Twitter happened in the middle of 2009 (likely thanks to that Ashton Kutcher/CNN battle), so it isn’t too surprising to see that Hospitals really started to embrace the status-based medium in the middle of last year. Up to that point, it seemed that many hospitals had been steadily joining YouTube before the prominent rise of Tweeting.
Self-Promoting Content
When it comes to the type of content that these health centers are sharing, it isn’t surprising to see that much of it is promotional about the facility. The content for an entire Twitter feed or YouTube channel may involve advertising spots or stories of health recovery from within their walls. In no way is this exclusive to how hospitals use digital media, but it is certainly a simple way to make sure that positive content around each organization is available.
Children’s Hospitals Posting Often
Bennett broke down his research into geographic categories, but he also split the data in a few extra verticals. Most notably, he has dedicated a full section to children’s hospitals from around the country and the different channels you can find them. The nature of content involving children may tend to pull at the heartstrings, and since young people are involved, the plethora of channels from these institutions are likely due to the fact that there is better audience fit online than general centers or intensive care.
A Lack of Blogs
Even though a major hospital blogger is often on the top of my “must read health blog” lists (Running a Hospital from Boston Beth Israel’s Paul Levy), it doesn’t seem to be the norm. According to Bennett’s research, only 94 of the 730 “digital” hospitals run full-fledged blogs. The balance between producing content, building an audience and maintaining a consistent publishing schedule are the likely barriers that push health centers towards a lower time-investment channel like Twitter.
How Could Foursquare Be Involved?
Bennett didn’t include it in his research, but there may be one more place worth checking out when it comes to health centers in the digital space: Foursquare. Hospitals, just like offices, airports and restaurants, offer a little bit of diversity of places to check-in to the location based-game. Unlike the other channels, health center venues on Foursquare probably weren’t created by the institution themselves, but that hasn’t stopped them from showing up for patients or employees to fight to become the mayor. Should Hospitals start paying attention to these channels, too?
Image credit: taberandrew and Paul Keleher
