The latest Hospital Social Media update is live. We are currently at 557 Health System / Hospitals / Centers with 1090 social media listings:
- 254 YouTube Channels
- 336 Facebook pages
- 430 Twitter Accounts
- 70 Blogs
I’ve dug into the data and found some interesting results. The Social Media adoption rate is heavily skewed to larger hospitals. This graph shows a breakdown of hospitals by bed count:
The Social Media adoption numbers come from the 460 hospitals on my list that have publicly available bed counts. The U.S. bed count data is based on information from the 2010 Billian’s Health Data Blue book, and public data from the 2002 AHA survey. The total number of U.S. hospitals and bed count breakdown were remarkably close from both sources.
The disparity should not be a surprise. Smaller hospitals, like those with less than 100 beds, have less resources to invest in most outward facing services. There’s usually only one person responsible for everything – marketing, public affairs, media relations, web development, philanthropy, etc. No wonder social media isn’t a priority. In fact only 14% (65) of the hospitals on my list have less than 100 beds, and 86% (395) have more than 100.
So let’s do the math. Assume there are 6,000 US hospitals.
50% of them have less than 100 beds, so that leaves 3,000 viable hospitals
But don’t forget that social media is blocked at many hospitals. I don’t have solid numbers, but a 50% block rate feels right. I don’t expect employees to work from home in order to maintain their employers Social Media presence (though some do), so we are now at 1,500 hospitals.
In addition to the 395 distinct 100+ bed hospitals on my list, there are 82 Health Care Systems doing centralized social media. Let’s take a very conservative average of 5 hospitals per system. That equals another 410 hospitals in the social media space.
We are now at 805 hospitals out of 1,500 doing some sort of social media.
That’s a 53% adoption rate.
Not bad for a conservative industry like health care.
Of course we can do better, (opening up access is our biggest hurdle) – but I think it’s time to stop beating up on our industry.
Feedback is welcome, I encourage you to download the raw data and do your own analysis. Folks that find basic flaws in my numbers or logic are encouraged to contact me – I want to hear from you.
People that nit-pick irrelevant details or misuse this data will be ignored.
Last week I attended a conference in Washington D. C. put on by the Advanced Learning Institute. The Social Media for Healthcare event featured over 20 speakers – almost all of them presenting case studies on the use of Social Media in their organizations. Many of the speakers were folks I know from #HCSM, so this provided a good opportunity meet in person and learn some best practices.
What follows are just a few of my notes from the conference.
Greg Matthews of Humana talked about projects they run out of the Innovation Center including Freewheel!n and Games for Health. He also previewed a new tool called TPS (Tweet Positioning System) that will let users geographically track conversations.
Chris Wilder of the Valley Medical Center Foundation showed how they use social media to raise awareness and funds for a public hospital. This includes a blog called The Wilder Side of Health, and special projects like Give a Booster Shot. Their biggest success was using these tools in support of a $840 Million bond initiative. It passed in 2008 with 78% of the vote.
Bryan Vartabedian, MD a pediatrics physician and popular blogger discussed how to create a personal voice online. He offered a clinical viewpoint that is relatively rare in social media.
Nick Dawson of Bon Secours Health System addressed the cultural / organizational issues of launching a social media program, and the tools he built to track ROI. His presentation and notes are here.
And that was just the first day. Unfortunately I couldn’t make it back for the rest of the conference which included Jamey Shiels of Aurora Health Care, Ryan Squire of Ohio State University Medical Center, Janice Nall of the CDC, Phil Baumann and many others.
The presentations confirmed that social media in a health care / hospital setting provides benefits to the organization – customer service, community outreach, and even increased revenue. I look forward to seeing what’s been accomplished by next years conference.
A long overdue update for the big list, with many more yet to be added. There are too many new sites to list here, with over 100 additions since the last update in June. Here are the quick stats:
351 Hospitals:
- 174 on YouTube
- 253 on Twitter
- 174 on Facebook
- 31 Hospital Blogs
Full List Here
Charts and Excel file here
More to come…
Most additions this week are for Twitter, but there were a few new Facebook accounts.
225 Hospitals: 87 Facebook – 128 YouTube – 140 Twitter – 23 blogs
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Not too many updates this week, most came from Tom Stitt. Thanks Tom!
For the past month, I’ve been relying on submissions from folks like Tom, Reed Smith, and others in my network. I’m grateful for their assistance.
In a few weeks I’ll do a more in-depth survey of Facebook and Youtube, and see if any new accounts have been added.
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On March 3′rd I asked the question: “I currently track 187 hospitals using Social Media tools – when will we go past 200?”
The prolific blogger and Twitter user, Ves Dimov predicted that number would reached by the end of March. It was a safe bet, the submissions have come in at a steady pace over the past two weeks. Here’s the current count:
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