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Time to Re-think Hospital Social Media Adoption

Ed Bennett — Mon, 15 Feb 2010 01:33:43 +0000

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.

Notes from the ALI Conference

Ed Bennett — Sun, 11 Oct 2009 19:04:54 +0000

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.

Hospital Social Media List – August 2009 Update

Ed Bennett — Wed, 12 Aug 2009 00:21:44 +0000

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…

Hospital Social Network List – April 19, 2009 Update

Ed Bennett — Sun, 19 Apr 2009 16:46:33 +0000

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

Baltimore Washington Medical Center, in Glen Burnie, MD on Twitter

Banner Behavioral Health, Scottsdale, AZ on Twitter

Baptist Health System, San Antonio, TX on Twitter

Cleveland Clinic, Cleveland, OH on Facebook

First Health, Pinehurst, NC on Twitter

North Vista Hospital, Las Vegas, NV on Facebook

Phoenix Children’s Hospital, Phoenix, AZ on Twitter

Regions Hospital, St. Paul, MN on YouTube and Facebook

Roswell Park Cancer Institute, Buffalo, NY on YouTube, Twitter and Facebook

St. Joseph’s Hospital and Medical Center, Phoenix, AZ on Twitter

Thomas Jefferson University Hospital on Twitter

Hospital Social Media Update – April 4, 2009

Ed Bennett — Sat, 04 Apr 2009 13:36:04 +0000

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.

Here are the current numbers:

216 Hospitals total
126 YouTube Channels
83 Facebook pages
132 Twitter Accounts
23 Blogs

New this week:

Allina Hospitals, Minneapolis, MN on Facebook

Blair E. Batson Childrens Hospital, Jackson, MS on Twitter

Childrens Hospital in LA, Los Angeles, CA on Twitter

Dayton Children’s Hospital, Dayton H, on Twitter

St. Joseph Hospital, Chicago, IL on Twitter

206 Hospitals using Social Media – What’s Next?

Ed Bennett — Thu, 19 Mar 2009 23:13:02 +0000

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:

206 Hospitals total
124 YouTube Channels
82 Facebook pages
117 Twitter Accounts
22 Blogs

FYI the 200′th Hospital was Northwestern Memorial Hospital in Chicago, IL with their Twitter account.

As you can see from the update list below, most of the growth continues to be with Twitter. At this pace, it should become the most popular social media tool by early April.

What’s Next?

I’d like to hear from you. What do you want me to cover on the blog and on the list? Would anyone be interested in a guest post? or interview? Let me know.

This weeks updates to the Hospital List:

Banner Heart Hospital, Mesa, AZ, on Twitter

Banner Gateway, Gilbert AZ, on Twitter

Banner Baywood, Mesa, AZ, on Twitter

Banner Thunderbird, Glendale, AZ on Twitter

Community Medical Center on YouTube and several Blogs

Huntington Hospital, Pasadena, CA on Twitter

Lehigh Valley Hospital Allentown, PA is on YouTube

Memorial Hermann, Houston, TX on Twitter and a Blog

Norman Regional Health System, Norman, OK on Twitter

Northwestern Memorial Hospital, Chicago, IL on Twitter

Sacred Heart Health System, Pensacola, FL on Twitter

Sacred Heart Hospital, Miramar Beach, FL on Twitter

UNC Health Care, Chapel Hill, NC on YouTube

Hospital Social Media Stats

Ed Bennett — Sun, 15 Mar 2009 22:38:35 +0000

Update – April 8, 2009

Please see this post for the latest charts - Twitter is now the leading hospital Social Media site

______________________

On Saturday, March 14, 2009, I took a snapshot of Hospital social media activity. Using links from the big list, I gathered the following data:

YouTube:

Account creation date
Number of Videos posted
Number of YouTube Channel Views
Number of Channel Subscribers

Twitter:

Account creation date (first update)
Number of Updates
Number of Followers

Facebook:

Number of Fans / Members

Here are some results. The original data is available as an Excel spreadsheet, please email me if you want a copy.

First, take a look at the adoption rate for YouTube and Twitter:

No surprises here, but it is interesting to see the rapid growth on Twitter. It took 26 months to reach 100 YouTube accounts, and 17 months to get the same number for Twitter. At this pace I expect crossover will happen in the next four to six weeks.

YouTube Statistics:

There are 121 YouTube channels, with a total of 4,575 videos.
The average number of videos per channel is 38, the median is 19
The average number of subscribers is 28, the median is 11
The average number of Channel Views is 1,736, the median is 629

Firsts and Mosts:

First on board – The first Hospital Youtube channel was set up by the Arkansas Children’s Hospital on Sept. 13, 2006
Number of Videos – Avera Health has 377 videos on it’s YouTube channel – more than anyone else.
Number of Subscribers – M.D. Anderson Cancer Center leads with 575 subscribers
Number of Channel Views – Cooper University Hospital leads with 24,383 views. This is interesting because the number was only 12,500 on Feb 2, 2009. Could it be Kelly Ripa?

Twitter Statistics:

There are 103 Twitter accounts, with a total of 9,223 updates
The average number of updates is 90, the median is 37
The average number of followers is 294, the median 202

Firsts and Mosts:

First on board – The first Twitter account was set up by St. Jude Children’s on October 23, 2007
Most Followers – Henry Ford Health has the most with 1,489 followers
Most Updates – Alegent Health leads with 1349 updates, almost three times more than the second most active account, @HenryFordNews

Facebook Stats:

Facebook doesn’t offer much for number crunching. You can’t even figure out when an account was created. The only stat I can track is the number of Fans or Members for a given account.

There are 82 Facebook accounts, with the average membership of 821. The median is 163 – which tells you that a few accounts have some high numbers
Most Fans / Members – Once again, St. Jude Children’s has the most with 33,252 fans

Want more? The original data is available as an Excel spreadsheet, please email me if you want a copy. Let me know if this is useful to you, and if there are any other statistics that we should follow.

While fun, these numbers don’t address the quality of the programs run by the 190+ hospitals tracked. And in Social Networking that counts for much more than sheer volume. However, monitoring the growth has some value, and I plan to capture these snapshots at regular intervals (possibly monthly). In six months to year, we should have enough data to see trends.