I’ve often touted Paul Levy’s “Running a Hospital” blog as the best in the business, and last week he cemented that position IMHO with his post on blocking social media. We’ve written about that before, but Levy offers the highly credible point of view of a hospital CEO.
Many of us would cringe at the notion of anybody being able to publicly comment on our work. Well, start cringing, because Google has made it possible.
When I was trying to convince doctors at my last place of employment that allowing secure messaging from existing patients was a good idea, I heard more than once that it would be the “end of modern medicine as we know it.” One of our physician champions found a reference that I’ve never been able to relocate that quoted doctors saying the same thing about another technological advancement: The telephone.
You know the old saying, “everybody talks about the weather, but nobody does anything about it”? Social media is not like that. Yes, everybody is talking about it, or so it seems. But many are actually doing something about it.
It’s barbeque season, and there are few things I like better than a good barbeque. But what happens if you are at a neighborhood barbeque and you realize a group of neighbors is talking about your hospital or health system. What do you do?
Prior to leaving my last job, leadership was talking about adding a position with “social media” in the title. While I applauded the additional resources, I suggested that might be kind of like adding someone to the PR staff with “news releases” in their title.
You’ve certainly heard the old adage about the cobbler’s children and the state of their shoes. Well, I’m afraid those of us at Greystone.Net have been so caught up in helping clients and trying to stay current in this fast moving Internet world, that we neglected our own site for too long.
In case you missed the big news last week, Facebook announced that it has added its 200 millionth member. That’s right – Facebook Nation is now the fifth largest country in the world. If your temptation is to discredit the impact of this amazing growth on healthcare by assuming that these new members come from the ranks of teenagers and college students, you would be making a big mistake. A majority of Facebook users are now over 35, and the fastest growing segment of Facebook users is actually women over 55. According to CNN, “There are now about 1.5 million female users older than 55 on the site — roughly a 550 percent increase over six months ago.” As a 33-yr old who has recently received friend requests from my mother and several of her friends, I can personally attest that the AARP-ization of Facebook is for real.
Basketball fans know Charlie Villanueva, a Milwaukee Bucks forward, as a solid but not spectacular NBA player who helped UConn win the 2004 NCAA National Championship. He is also known by some for his work as a spokesman for the NAAF (National Alopecia Areata Foundation), which supports research into the autoimmune skin disease from which he suffers.
With 185 hospitals using one form of social media or another, I’d say healthcare has clearly gotten the message. But I worry a bit about some of what I’m seeing out there. Let’s just say there’s evidence aplenty that while many have dipped their toes in the waters of social media, few have a real plan in place.