Creating a Social Media Revolution One Hospital at a time

Creating a Social Media Revolution One Hospital at a time

choose what s best for you Creating a Social Media Revolution One Hospital at a Time Report on the Social Media Strategic Plan for the Australian Private Hospitals Association Lisa Ramshaw August 2014 Project Overview Over the past five years, the Australian Private Hospitals Association (APHA) has led a quiet social media revolution in our 300 member hospitals. As a lobbying organisation, APHA also has an opportunity to engage with government officials through social media. We benefit from having trained individuals at hospitals who see the value of social media for their own facilities, as well as for the sector as a whole, upon who we can call for assistance when lobbying for or against a government initiative. We decided to focus on identifying and training advocates in the private hospital sector to speak on our behalf. Our strategic plan focused on helping us increase the number of advocates trained in social media at member facilities. Background APHA has 300 hospital members across Australia. Collectively, these 300 hospitals have approximately 65,000 FTE staff members. Social media has a high adoption rate in Australia, with more than 13 million Aussies on Facebook (out of a population of 23 million people) and almost 3 million active users on Twitter. Still, the health care sector tends to lag behind the rest of society as a whole. In addition, although there has been plenty of technological innovation in the healthcare sector, innovation has traditionally been applied to procedures and diagnostic tests. The sector as a whole typically invests about 1.5 per cent per annum in IT systems compared with 2.5 per cent in other sectors. There is also little electronic connectivity within the sector 1, this includes a struggling national e-health strategy. According to medical education blog Life in the Fast Lane, very few hospitals are using social media channels to communicate with patients and other stakeholders. In 2013, 13% of Australian hospitals had a Twitter account and 11% had a Facebook page. APHA wanted to lead member hospitals into using social media by demonstrating the importance of the medium and the impact social media can have to educate patients and their caregivers, build hospital brands and improve patient experiences in member hospitals. Many of our facilities are small and staff 1 Selected Facts and Statistics on Australia s Healthcare Sector: Engaging and empowering citizens and patients is the key to better health outcomes, Business Council of Australia, February 2011.

members do not have much time or money to put towards marketing. APHA provides a guiding and mentoring role to get them involved in social media. In addition, APHA lobbies the federal and state governments on behalf of member hospitals when issues arise that have potential to negatively impact private hospital business, such as government policy changes to the private health insurance rebate. For a number of years, APHA has been a lone voice advocating social media use within the private hospital sector. We particularly wanted our hospital management to become more involved in social media, notably on Twitter, to help us generate more support for our positions. Most politicians in Australia are on Twitter and APHA has a good track record of using this social media platform to engage with them. Strategic Plan The activities in our strategic plan were carried out over an eight month period from November 2013 to the end of June 2014. We focused on two main tactics during that period. First, we focused on building capacity and removing the fear factor of getting started on social media by offering training workshops in 5 of 6 states in Australia. These workshops brought representatives from 42 member hospitals together for a one day training seminar. Each day focused on: Intro to Social Media Social Media Strategic Planning Building a Brand using Digital Media Crisis Communications How Can Social Media Help? Platform Exploration Making Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, Vine, Pinterest and Video work for your hospital (including case studies featuring hospitals who presented at MCCSM 2013) Tweetcamp a hands on session where we led participants from setting up a Twitter account, through to following others (including politicians, media and others in the healthcare sector), sending their first tweets and understanding Twitter clients for tablets and/or smartphones. Next we focused on building numbers of hospital management and staff participating on Twitter so we would have a strong pool of tweeters to draw on if/when needed. In addition to the Tweetcamp session at the training days, we offered sessions during our Annual National Congress to help CEOs and other management use Twitter. We promoted Twitter use at the Congress through a Tweetscreen and also ran competitions encouraging attendees to tweet photographs of speakers and activities at the Congress. Finally, I wrote Don t Be an Egghead, a pocket-sized book, in conjunction with two co-presenters from the social media workshops. This book provides basic Twitter tips for hospitals and healthcare organisations. Copies were given to all participants of the Congress.

Results Our goals: Provide social media training workshops across Australia with delegates participating from a third of APHA member facilities in the 2013-14 financial year. o Result: Social Media training workshops were offered in November and December with delegates from 42 of APHA s member facilities. Feedback from participants included: I thought the content was great as it was relevant to private hospital setting which made it even more beneficial. The session was a good general overview of the power and use of social media. Get the policy right first, then the benefits outweigh the negatives. It was a great introduction into how SM can benefit hospitals. Broadened my knowledge. There is such a huge scope of how SM can be used but also being mindful to keep its use within organisational policy & procedure in order to protect staff and clients. Social media is absolutely unavoidable - get on board, but do so in a sustainable and manageable way. Increase number of hospital CEOs actively engaged on Twitter by 10 during the 2013-14 financial year. In October 2013, we had 8 hospital managers actively engaged on Twitter and we wanted to increase this by 10 by the end of June 2014. o Result: As of June 2014 we have 23 CEOs or senior hospital managers to call on when we need messages amplified. We continue to monitor their activity and work with them to ensure they are tweeting APHA messages to their local politicians and networks. o Result: A secondary result is that I am now asked to speak about social media at healthcare organisations beyond APHA s member hospitals which increases our exposure in the sector. We ve also had requests to re-print Don t Be an Egghead and provide it at a few conferences. Observations Social media training for hospital staff worked well. We had representatives from most of the large hospital groups and some smaller day surgeries. Most people attending were complete novices who could see the potential for social media use at their facility. Some have gone on to create social media accounts for their hospitals and help share APHA s messages with a wider public. We plan to continue this format this year and will offer a workshop to teach people how to shoot video with smartphones. Our efforts on Twitter have been slow because many hospital CEOs and senior management are uncomfortable with technology. Those who embrace it have experienced its power and see it as a valuable tool for amplifying our messages. Summary Although much work remains to change attitudes, we have a solid start in building relationships and social media networks. We continue to provide training and assistance for members who want to start

their social media journey and provide advice for those further down the path as needed. At the same time, we are trying to model best practices in our own activities so hospitals can see successful integrated social media campaigns, the benefits of being involved and how adding their voice to ours strengthens messages from our sector. Addendum (Examples) Private Hospitals Week Social Media Campaign Private Hospitals Week was held 19-25 May 2014. For the fourth year, 200 APHA members participated in the week by hosting events and using collateral materials provided by APHA. In addition to the usual posters, brochures, stickers, balloons and fact cards celebrating the private hospital sector, APHA also produced a 1:20 video. This video was promoted on YouTube and was viewed 19,614 times with the average person watching 58 seconds or 84% of the video during the month of May. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=daed2y_oebk The video was also promoted on Facebook (separate to the YouTube video) and had 11,621 video plays which then generated 188 post likes and 111 page likes. Facebook automatically plays videos so there is no statistic available about how long people watch them. Also new this year was producing and promoting infographics via social media. The rehab fact card/infographic alone received 1,110 Page Photo Views, 886 Post Likes and 81 Page Likes. The cardiac ad received 221 Post Likes, 99 Website Clicks and 40 Page Likes. Examples of the infographic posts are below.

The overall reach of the social media and online advertising for the month of May was 657,232 people (Facebook: 345,987 and Google: 311,245) The total cost of all advertising for Private Hospitals Week was AUD$6971.33.