Integrating Social Media into Everyone's Job - Even in Clinical Health Care

I recently watched the COO of a health care organization get excited when she suddenly "got it."  We were talking about how the company could use social media to help achieve its objectives.  We discussed market positioning, and brand awareness, and information sharing, and friends and family support groups.  The column titled "Clinical" on my brainstorming sheet, however, got little attention.  Until the COO took a second look at my preliminary ideas and suddenly saw how some social media channels and concepts could be used to improve direct patient care.

In that moment, the discussion shifted.  We were no longer talking about how to USE social media.  We were talking about how social media could change the core business model and operations.  Social media was being made part of everyone's job, even the clinicians'.

Health care organizations generally play only tentatively with social media.  They are concerned about privacy; many are big and bureaucratic; openness and transparency are rarely cultural identifiers (apologies and kudos to those small, agile, and culturally open health care groups).  But when social media is recognized as an enabler to improved outcomes and performance, the opportunities multiply.

Health care organizations can expand the engagement with patients, whether in a one-to-one  or one-to-many environment.  They can engage with the patient communities that already exist, help create new networks, and even enhance some therapies.  They can improve internal communication among staff, which ultimately aids patient outcome and operating performance.  The opportunities only exist, however, if all staff members - clinical and not - are responsible for integrating social media thinking and lifestyle into their jobs.

The COO of this health care organization was using the clover architecture approach to implementation (see http://bit.ly/r9oppb):

• She was leading by sharing her insights and asking everyone to think differently, and by identifying how she would use social media in her own job.
• A distributed governance structure was being implemented, with each staff person assuming responsibility; there would be a social media guru, but no central social media department.
• The cultural change that was beginning was enormous.  Each person, including clinicians, was being challenged to figure out how social media could help to drive better results.  Multi-directional and multi-stakeholder collaboration became key.
• The technology was kept user-friendly and simple.

By recognizing that the objective of social media is a lifestyle not initiatives (see http://bit.ly/rb0P2i), this health care organization is improving patient care and satisfaction.  Every department and person is invited to participate.