For hospitals, the transparency of social media can be a bigger undertaking than for other businesses in which patient privacy protection is not a concern. To address these issues, hospitals in Westchester County have developed methods to balance social media engagement and patient privacy.
The challenges hospitals are faced with are threefold. Should medical centers have a social media presence? If so, what accounts do they administer in-house? Last, should hospitals respond to patients and their families who post comments, both negative and positive, on social media sites?
The Business Journal talked to representatives from Northern Westchester Hospital in Mount Kisco and Phelps Memorial Hospital Center in Sleepy Hollow. Though both hospitals are part of the North Shore-LIJ Health System, they have different social media engagement policies.
Northern Westchester”™s Joan Kantor, the hospital”™s online marketing manager, and Maria Hale, vice president in the office of patient advocacy, said the social media policy was developed at the end of 2009.
“As we were preparing to launch our social media presences, I knew we were going to deal with negative posts,” Kantor said. “We were not going to launch a Facebook page, for example, without having a policy for handling negative posts.”
Northern Westchester responds to positive and negative comments on social media ”” including Google+, Facebook and a number of other platforms ”” with specially-crafted responses.
For example, a Google+ commenter said they were treated immediately and professionally in the hospital”™s emergency room, giving Northern Westchester a five-star rating.
The hospital responded with: “We are pleased to care for you. We wish you continued healing and good health.”
Scroll up a little further and a patient gave a one-star rating accompanied by a 204-word post about a poor experience with ambulatory care, in-patient care and their attempt to follow up with the hospital.
In its 102-word response, Northern Westchester thanked the person for rating their experience, advised Google+ is not the most appropriate forum to continue the discussion and provided a patient advocate number to call.
In some cases, when Kantor”™s team identifies a critical post with a specific problem, they will refer the problem to Hale.
That way, Hale said, “I have the opportunity to connect with the individual. I also get a chance to do a deeper dive and get more information.”
The method of individually responding to posts and scanning the hospital”™s social media pages for feedback is what Kantor called “grassroots in the marketing department” because the hospital doesn”™t have the budget for a sophisticated digital media reputation tracking tool.
On a weekly basis, Northern Westchester”™s Facebook page receives about 2,500 likes, comments, shares or clicks on its posts.
“We wanted to respond to individual complaints publicly, directly and promptly because we wanted to know as much as possible to see what people were saying about the hospital,” she said.
Phyllis Vonderheide is the senior director of patient experience at Phelps Memorial Hospital Center, which does not respond to social media feedback on the hospital”™s three verified accounts with Twitter, Facebook and YouTube.
“One of the concerns about addressing or directly answering a patient in social media is, even though they have chosen to name the experience at the hospital, our concern is acknowledging it” because doing so could violate health privacy laws, Vonderheide said.
“We certainly look at what people say and try to research it,” she said. “I would investigate the issue, I would take it to the department that is appropriate and then I share that information in some form with the leaders.”
Upon learning how other hospitals have handled using social media, Vonderheide was intrigued by the idea of posting a generic statement to acknowledge complaints and compliments while providing information. And rather than engaging in a full conversation about the patient or experience, direct the conversation to a different medium.
Ultimately, there was agreement among the hospitals”™ officials social media is evolving and so must their implementation of it.
“Social media is just becoming ubiquitous, to resist it, you”™re limiting yourself as an organization,” Hale said.
