Physician practice websites will increase your community hospital practice’s visibility, build its reputation in the community and give your marketing budget the most value for every dollar spent.
The Internet is an absolutely essential tool for physician practices. I am amazed at how many rural practices that I talk to who have virtually no web presence.
Online Healthcare Empowers Consumers. Your practices need websites to acquire patients in an increasingly tech-savvy world.
In order to build a bridge between healthcare providers and patients, a website must also project the right image to your target audience. The appearance of the practice website and the information it presents greatly impact your visitors’ first impressions of your services. Their initial perceptions are completely in your control. How do you want your practice to be seen to the public? As reliable, modern and informed? As friendly, warm and welcoming? Build your site to reflect your practice.
As healthcare marketers, we talk a lot about mobile and social media campaigns, QR codes and email communication. None of these are effective if we have no coherent destination or website to which we can direct patients.
Developing your practice website is the first and most effective form of communication today!
Essential website content:
- A short description of your practice and specialties
- Physician biographies and certifications
- Personalized facilities and staff photos
- Explanations of procedures and services
- Before-and-after case studies showcasing your skills
- Hospital affiliations
- Office hours, office policies and accepted insurance plans
- Directions and maps to the practice
- Patient education articles
Getting ahead of the competition:
- Search Engine Optimization (SEO)
- Social media integration
- EMR patient portal
- Physician videos
- Electronic patient forms
- Interactive maps and driving directions
- Patient education videos
Successful Practice Websites:
- Desert Institute for Spine Care – Physician videos, Patient education videos, Patient forms
- Cardiovascular Longevity’s MyEliteHealth – Patient Portal Integration, Patient forms
- Dr. Cooper-Lall – A dentist who understands the power of social media
As a mom and healthcare shopper, I take charge of my family’s health. Healthcare consumers go online for an increasing variety of healthcare information including looking for their doctors.
A website for your practice is more than just a way to “keep up” with your competition – it’s a way to get ahead.
With the increasing popularity of social media, your physicians, too, can start using social media to engage with patients and to offer themselves as a resource to the community.
Physicians have limited time and sometimes lack the knowledge, but even simple interactions on the Web can have a multitude of benefits for both your physicians and your community hospital.
Why Physicians Use Social Media
Bunny Ellerin, founder of Ellerin Health Media, explores why doctors use social media in her new white paper publication, The Social Physician. After interviewing 10 physicians across the nation, Ellerin cites a few reasons why physicians use social media:
- To improve patient care: Physicians recognize that patients have access to a multitude of irrelevant and inaccurate information on the Web, so some use social media to provide patients with trusted and valid content from medical professionals.
- To make themselves relatable: There is a long-standing stigma that physicians should maintain personal distance from patients. By interacting with patients on such a personal, informal level through social media, physicians “invite patients into their world” and make themselves more approachable.
- To participate: The ability to give opinions and views used to be available only to medical journalists, but now every physician is capable of expressing his ideas on healthcare practices, procedures and other medical issues through social media.
Easy Ways to Get Started
Encourage your physicians to:
- Create a Facebook page: Facebook allows the physician to establish a personal identity on the web and connect on a human level, with the capability to share health and event offerings.
- Open a Twitter account: Twitter enables easy status updates — even throughout the workday, the physician can easily post comments and links and share bits of information with patients without losing much time.
- Start blogging: Although blogging can be a bigger time investment, center on your physicians’ strengths — if some of them enjoy writing and offering opinions and advice, suggest they start a blog! It would be helpful to have a few reliable physicians’ blogs to which you could refer patients for updated medical insights and opinions. Two great, free blogging sites: www.wordpress.com and Google’s official blog — www.blogspot.com.
Benefits to Your Community Hospital
With your physicians actively participating in outlets such as Facebook, Twitter and blogging sites, your community hospital will indirectly improve its:
- Presence on the Web: The Internet is quickly becoming the public’s go-to place for information. Your physicians — who are associated with your community hospital — will be an online reference for your patients. This will spread the good work and reputation of your institution in the online community.
- Doctor-patient relations: Social media enable physicians and patients to connect in a less structured environment. Patients may be less intimidated to post their medical questions on a physician’s blog or to “tweet” some comments on Twitter than to speak to her in person.
Successful Social Physicians
Ellerin found many successful social physicians in her research:
- Dr. Stephen Lemon, an Omaha-based medical oncologist in private practice, launched his first website in 1998 and plans to launch CanerLifeCenter.com, on which he plans to — among other things — blog about oncology topics.
- Jonathan Vitale, a fourth-year medical student in Eria, PA, avidly uses Twitter to reach his 1,400 followers as @DrJonathan. His tweets are short and don’t take much time, but he’s gathered a loyal following to look to him as a role model for health.
- Dr. Kevin Pho is a regular blogger — his blog generates over 300,000 page views a month and includes over 130 contributors in addition to Dr. Pho. If your physicians desire to start a blog, Dr. Pho’s articles will show them how to put context around medical news from a physician’s viewpoint.
To hear more of Ellerin’s stories, discoveries and conclusions, click here to download The Social Physician article in its entirety.
Wireless iPads and tablet computers offer new solutions that can revolutionize your community hospital physician practices by increasing productivity, maximizing physician-patient time and promoting the hospital.
Physician uses for the iPad include:
- Digital file keeper — iPad applications enable doctors to securely access a hospital’s electronic health records from anywhere within the building. No more illegible note taking or misplacing of files. Doctors can also manage electronic patient prescriptions right on their iPads.
- Marketing — Sales teams can effectively deliver propositions using flexible and individualized presentations on the iPad. These portable devices can easily and interactively showcase what the hospital has to offer at marketing events. Check out this article from Medical Marketing & Media discussing the iPad’s advantages for healthcare and pharma marketers.
- In the waiting room — The iPad can be used to engage patients from the moment they enter the building. In the waiting room, the iPad could present patients with relevant literature and testimonials while enabling them to access your social media pages. Refer to the ideas in this dentistry article.
- Quick reference tool — The iPad has the capability to download and store entire textbooks and reference materials, which a doctor would constantly have at his disposal.
- Media sharing — Doctors can share procedure videos and information with patients without even leaving the examination room. The screen is large enough to potentially view X-rays and other such images.
- Organizer — Setting appointments and taking notes is made easy with the iPad’s quick access to a calendar and note taker.
The iPad can ultimately make the hospital a more engaging and efficient environment. Some medical institutions have already begun experimenting with the new technology.
iPad in Practice
- The University of Central Florida gave each of its 100 medical students an iPad this past Christmas as part of a two-year research study. Lectures, reading materials and 3-D images of systems like the brain and vertebrae are readily available at students’ fingertips.
- And the iPad has already been recognized by the autism community, as the iPad develops more and more applications for users with special needs.
- Some people doubt the iPad’s capacity to serve the medical field and have adopted a more sarcastic view. The Disease Management Care Blog outlines the “illusory potential” of Apple’s iPad in revolutionizing clinical practices by listing 10 outlandish uses for the iPad in “˜the real world’. For instance: use your iPad as an instrument tray or as a doorstop!
But the device’s potential really seems limitless. Only time will tell whether the iPad is really equipped to revolutionize physician practices.
Anniversaries provide the perfect chance to market using social media. Reinvigorate your hospital brand, reignite interest, reintroduce your community to new services and — if you play your marketing cards right — get free exposure for your hospital through smart PR!
If your hospital has been around for 30, 50, 100 or more years, you have a wonderful opportunity to mark the occasion with employees, patients and potential new patients.
Many hospitals have interesting past. Developing your personal community message and social media marketing plan like Swedish Medical Center 100 year campaign will develop community pride and engage a new group of patient advocates.
Swedish Medical Center 100 year anniversary marketing
- Cut back drastically on traditional marketing to develop social media and video opportunities.
- Held a cutest baby contest where previous “Swedish babies” were posted on their Facebook page. These pictures were then used to create a portfolio of babies on a Microsoft surface table that were placed in the maternity area of a local Nordstrom store.
- Video of 100 stories from patients and staff
- Swedish has had excellent success with mob videos created during the employee 100 year anniversary launch.
5 ideas to remember when Planning a special milestone:
- You can celebrate a new service anniversary, a new building, a brand update or new or expanded mission/vision.
- You should celebrate to re-energize employees. Give current patients a reason to look at additional services you offer. Increase exposure your offerings to potential patients. Allow you open new services or find new and innovative uses of our current services.
- Your celebration plan should first, roll out activities for employees, followed by patients and finally, potential patients. (After all, your employees are your most important assets, so they should be in on the plan and the celebration first!)
- Your celebration campaign budget should be budgeted like an other marketing campaign. Since you are using the celebration as a marketing tool (not just for a cake in the conference room), don’t be stingy! If done well, a celebration campaign can be just the ticket to boost patient volume in a sluggish economy. And the anniversary gives you a reason to be advertising or a reason for the media to cover an event, which is often much more intriguing to patients than straight “about me” advertising, so don’t go cheap!
- Don’t forget Social media. When planning a community event like a hospital anniversary use social media as a key part of your marketing effort to engage and cultivate participation in the celebration.
Whether it’s a year-long string of activities for a 100 year anniversary, or a one month media blitz for a new location, the hook of the celebration can be just the ticket to get your hospital noticed by the community!
The best marketers know facts tell, but stories sell, so increase your patient base by turning health information facts into a compelling story.
Integrating relatable stories into you hospital’s social media marketing is a great way to encourage dialog, interaction and sharing with your consumers. Human beings are hardwired to learn from one another and we connect with those we feel we can relate to, so storytelling serves as a valuable tool when marketing your hospital.
You can continually engage current and prospective patients by delivering high-quality, relevant information through storytelling on your hospital’s social media networks.
Interactive marketing consultant, Heidi Cohen, recently wrote an article on ways businesses can integrate their stories into social media marketing. I applied Heidi’s tip to community hospital marketing and gave examples on how you could take your hospital’s stories and integrate them with your social media marketing.
5 Ways to Integrate Your Hospital’s Stories Into Your Social Media Marketing
- Determine trending topics to write about. To increase the audience for your content, leverage interest around hot healthcare topics with new, creative insights. Have a surgeon write an article for your blog on the latest advancements is surgical techniques aimed at reducing scaring.
- Source stories from patients. Let others tell stories related to your brand. Use your patients as brand ambassadors and let them share their positive experiences about your hospital and physicians.
- Incorporate a human-interest element into your content. Since people are attracted to other people, use various social media formats to portray people, particularly photos like Flickr, video like YouTube and audio like podcasts. Share before and after stories and photos from bariatric surgery patients or an athlete now able to stay in the game after orthopaedic surgery, etc.
- Allow for interactions and additions. Social media sites are the perfect platform to enable sharing in this manner. Have an inspiring patient write weekly posts on their chemo treatment journey, post healthy recipes on Facebook and ask for feedback, etc.
- Share pertinent information quickly and broadly. One of the major attributes of social media entities is that users are connected to a large number of their friends and colleagues. Provide links to your Twitter page from your blog and share your success stories, wellness information, etc. This is also a great way to get urgent information out quickly. (i.e. last year’s H1N1 scare)
Social media networks serve as great platforms to tell your hospital’s story, whether it’s a story on new technology, growth, awards or patient successes. Becoming a thought leader and trusted expert on healthcare issues in the minds of your audience is a powerful tool in building and promoting your hospital’s brand.
Click here to read the entire article, 5 Ways to Integrate Stories Into Your Social Media Marketing.
Mobile devices provide your hospital with a marvelous low-cost opportunity to reach your consumers as they search medical related information on the web.
It is projected that by 2013 half of all web traffic will be through a mobile device. However, I feel community healthcare marketers are still trying to determine if this medium is right for their market. New Research on growing mobile customers and inexpensive cost for a mobile campaign are making mobile marketing a must for your community hospital.
A recent Pew Research study that found that 82 percent of American adults have a cell phone, 59 percent of U.S. adults age 18 and older now access the internet wirelessly using a laptop or mobile device, and of those, 61 percent are searching for health-related information. Another study by comScore finds that one in four mobile subscribers who browse the web search for local information.
But best of all for selling the use of mobile marketing to your hospital leaders is the ability to cross-market wireless campaigns with free social media endeavors resulting in low-cost, high ROI achievements that any community hospital can utilize. Mobile marketing can significantly lower marketing costs than traditional medium.
We can now site examples of how mobile technology has improved emergency medical care, advance local health initiatives and reach multi-generational audiences. It gives them real-time, portable access to health information. Mobile technology holds great promise for your future goals of keeping people healthy, managing diseases and lowering healthcare costs.
Hospitals that are taking advantage of mobile marketing:
- The Nashville Business Journal recently reported on how hospitals in Tennessee are investing in mobile versions of their website in hopes of attracting new patients and building brand loyalty. Saint Thomas Health Services launched a mobile version of its website which allows users to easily access hospital directions, phone numbers and a health information section all from their Blackberry, iPhone or Droid.
- HCA West Florida Division hospitals are partnering with mobile healthcare platform Healthagen connecting their consumers with health information using smartphone app, iTriage.
Here are 6 steps that can be used when developing mobile outreach campaign for your community hospital:
- Step 1: Build a permission database. Communications that are respectful, engaging and, most of all, wanted by the recipient, makes them far more valuable and effective than traditional advertising.
- Step 2: Find your target audience. Being strategic about your target audience will save you money. For example, a campaign to raise ovarian cancer awareness, would not target male recipients. likewise a reproductive health initiative — would not target boomers or senior citizens.
- Step 3: Develop the campaign message. Keep your messages simple, but compelling and make sure they are relevant and timely.
- Step 4: Start a dialogue with an audience. Keep this conversation going, by collecting data, monitor responsiveness towards campaigns and build relationships with the community.
- Step 5: Choose the channels and integrate. Mobile marketing provides your subscribers with content and services that fit their lifestyle and improve their lives portably. Get out of the print rut and learn how to fully integrate marketing channels to create awareness about important health initiatives.
- Step 6: Think beyond the SMS. Think beyond the traditional “HOWRU2DAY” message. Think content downloads, surveys, health alerts such as vaccination reminders or even reminders for periodical check-ups and examinations such as mammograms — all designed to provide important information and build relationships with the community and subscriber base.
Consumers are no longer just sitting in front of their home or office computer looking up health information; internet usage is now portable.
Deliver your content more efficiently, make better use of your information on all marketing channels, reduce costs and to help consumers improve their health and their lives through a medium they understand and embrace.
Have you consider mobile marketing when you provide services for the community, communicating to physicians and marketed to current patients?
By conducting a review and evaluation of your hospital’s and competitor’s marketing materials you can improve, coordinate and deliver more cost-effective materials.
Your community hospital has a heart and soul. Shouldn’t every piece of marketing that reaches a patient’s hands convey the right message?
Your marketing team is aware of the need in consistency in all the internal and external marketing materials. Selling a review of all your hospital’s ads, brochures and websites to the leaders is difficult with today’s budgets.
Create an awareness to leaders that the steps you take to evaluate your brand will assure quality to potential and current patients. This quality is the most valuable asset you have!
Don’t be swayed from evaluating your communication materials because of the time investment or size of your hospital.
Audits can be tailored to need and can be as simple (service line audit in weeks) and complex (over a couple of months for the whole organization) as needed. You can speed up the process by gathering the marketing materials to review and clearly summarizing the hospital’s mission vision and values to your independent auditor.
Compile Your Existing Marketing Materials
- Hospital Logo and Service Line Logos
- Websites
- Social Media Sites
- Brochures
- Fliers
- Data Sheets
- Trade Show Materials
- Internal and External Signage
- Advertisements
- Stationary
- Online and Print Newsletters
After your pile of materials is laid out you may be shocked to see the inconsistencies in your hospital materials. These inconsistent marketing materials give the impression of an unstable hospital, one that’s in flux. The unfortunate result is patients get nervous, your market position is compromised, and mind share is at risk.
Review Your Messaging
Analyzing these communication pieces helps you sell to leadership that your hospital messaging could align better with their strategic priorities and core values. Now you will have the ammunition to sell improving the communication overall.
I always recommend a visual communications audit for all hospitals at the beginning of a hospital/agency relationship and every few years to make sure you don’t drift from your identity. Looking with a fresh and unbiased perspective, across all marketing materials, can unlock the communication roadblocks keeping your community from understanding the value that your hospital brings to its members, patients, families, providers and partners.
Some of the questions that I would ask are:
- Are you adhering to the graphic standards of your hospital brand. (images, logos, font, colors etc.)
- Is there consistency in messaging? Does it follow your brand promise?
- Are your hospital strategies focused and on-target?
- Do all the pieces look like they’re from the same hospital?
- Is your website up-to-date and maintained?
- Have your marketing messages adapted to the current market?
- Does your brand identity reflect the personality of your hospital?
- How do your communications compare with your competition?
For your hospital it is key to communicate either clinical care (product) or providing care (service). Once your audit is complete you will better understand how to deliver a unified voice to educate new patients about new machines, treatments and your unique patient care experience giving your hospital the competitive edge.
Benefits of Your Communication Audit
- Savings: Audits normally uncover items no longer effective
- Impact: Points out areas where small changes produce big results
- Planning: Becoming aware is the first step in deciding where to go in the future
Don’t wait on leadership changes or your leaders to notice the inconsistency in your marketing materials. Audits can be as simple or as extensive as your budget and needs dictate. The results will protect the visual consistency resulting in gained market share and profits.
Additional Communication Audit Resources
Spurred on by the great recession, the marketing landscape has dramatically changed, providing hospital marketers with a greater ability to be even more strategic with their marketing, communicating faster and at a much lower cost.
According to a recent Advertising Age article, companies that spent more on advertising enjoyed “double the success rate of those whose spending rate declined.” These gains in sales help reinforce the idea that advertising delivers.
This kind of information can help you convince your hospital’s CEO the value of advertising even in the midst of a recession. Advertising can provide a return on investment, giving a marketer ammunition to prove the return on investment to hospital CEOs. Companies from retail Wal-Mart, fast food McDonald’s and pharmaceutical Pfizer had the gumption to stick their neck out and increase ad spending last year.
Here are some recessionary marketing tips that I recommend:
- Don’t stop – Increased ad spending during a recession contributes to increased financial performance for up to three years after the recession
- Nurture the brand – Perceived quality, leadership, uniqueness and growth needs to stay at the top of your marketing efforts
- Develop new strategies to increase low-cost advertising – Social media, screenings and classes
- Maintain media presence – Expand the use of PR
- Take advantage of media deflation – Greater negotiating leverage with media sellers and communicate with free online social media channels
- Rethink your budget - Allocate spending from services that aren’t hurt by economic factors (cosmetic) to (heart health)
- Strengthen the relationship of current customers
- Promote community benefit – Create opportunities for positive PR by communicating your local community commitment
- Skip costly focus group spending – Use consumer feedback to understand how to target more effectively
To provide quicker results on a limited budget, I would encourage you to increase spending in these three online marketing channels:
- Social media – Use free online social media channels for marketing and turn information into insights, campaigns and finding brand ambassadors.
- Targeted web advertising – The Internet consists of billions of pages. If you have a clearly identified target, purchase advertising space on web pages particularly visited by these users. Create customized, meaningful call-to-action and these campaigns can drive results.
- Community hospital website - A well optimized website that reflects your desired perception can have the ability to close the loop on the marketing plan. Make sure you have the content that allows people to get the answer to whatever interested them, such as the ability to receive information, complete a questionnaire or request a follow-up contact.
Media deflation and the use of social media - Consumer media habits have changed, making room for other options besides expensive, traditional, outbound advertising. Community hospital marketers can do more for less, taking advantage of inexpensive alternative advertising and social media.
- YouTube videos vs. 30 second TV commercials
- Blog vs. print newsletter
- LinkedIn account vs. traditional business networking group
- Facebook updates vs. updating your hospital website
The low-cost, wide reach, ease-of-use and speed of implementation of these social media platforms levels the playing field for community hospitals to reach huge numbers of community members effectively, something that usually would be prohibitively costly using traditional media.
It is not uncommon to spend thousands for newspaper advertisement, only to get less than 20 inquiries. Above $10,000 per month on billboard and over a hundred thousand on TV advertisement all to achieve what we can now do with engaging our community using alternative advertising.
Knowing even temporary reductions in media presence can impact brand awareness, I would suggest you reconsider your media strategy first. Then leverage the use of new media to minimize the negative impact of decreased spending.
I believe by being more strategic your community hospital can strengthen and grow your marketing even in a recession.
I would LOVE to hear your inexpensive alternative advertising success stories. Do you have cost savings and increased patient numbers to back up your success?
Read more about the ways to market Top 100 Outlays Plunge 10% but Defying Spend Trend Can Pay Off
Joining the Healthcare Blogger Code of Ethics (HBCE) and following its standards will enhance the credibility of your hospital and physician blog(s), which will strengthen social media efforts, consumer trust and brand loyalty.
As community hospital marketers navigating our way through the world of social media, we all understand the importance of creating and maintaining our hospital and physician blogs in order to best execute social media efforts and engage our consumers online. Many hospitals have multiple niche blogs focused on different service lines and conditions (maternity, breast cancer, diabetes, etc.) that offer information, stories and support to our consumers.
The overall goal for these blogs is to establish your organization (and physicians) as a trusted resource for health services and information through online engagement. To accomplish this goal effectively and strengthen online branding efforts, each blog must maintain a high degree of integrity with the information it provides and transparency of its sources.
The Healthcare Blogger Code of Ethics was developed to give readers of medical blogs a clear idea of the standards by which the blog is maintained and to give medical bloggers a clear set of guidelines they can show employers, patients or other concerned parties as to the nature of the blogging.
Following these medical blogging standards will ensure the quality and integrity of your blog, which is key to gaining consumer trust.
The Healthcare Blogger Code of Ethics
- Clear representation of perspective — readers must understand the training and overall perspective of the author of a blog. Certainly bloggers can have opinions on subjects outside of their training, and these opinions may be true, but readers must have a place to look on a blog to get an idea of where this author is coming from. This also encompasses the idea of the distinction between advertisement and content. This does not preclude anonymous blogging, but it asks that even anonymous bloggers share the professional perspective from which they are blogging.
- Confidentiality — bloggers must respect the nature of the relationship between patient and medical professionals and the clear need for confidentiality. All discussions of patients must be done in a way in which patients’ identities cannot be inferred. A patient’s name can only be revealed in a way that is in keeping with the laws that govern that practice (HIPPA, Informed Consent).
- Commercial Disclosure — the presence or absence of commercial ties of the author must be made clear for the readers. If the author is using their blog to pitch a product, it must be clear that they are doing that. Any ties to device manufacturer and/or pharmaceutical company ties must be clearly stated.
- Reliability of Information — citing sources when appropriate and changing inaccuracies when they are pointed out.
- Courtesy — bloggers should not engage in personal attacks, nor should they allow their commenters to do so. Debate and discussion of ideas is one of the major purposes of blogging. While the ideas people hold should be criticized and even confronted, the overall purpose is a discussion of ideas, not those who hold ideas.
You can submit your blog for review by the Healthcare Blogger Code of Ethics to become a part of the community. Once approved, you will be given permission to add the Code’s seal to your blog, which will increase the credibility of your blog to readers. Checkout the blogs below who are members of the Healthcare Blogger Code of Ethics community.
Healthcare Blogger Code of Ethics Medical Blogs
Dr. Wendy Harpham on Healthy Survivorship
Read more about the Healthcare Blogger Code of Ethics. If you have any questions or would like to submit a blog for review, email their administrator.
Video sharing platform YouTube, has become one of the web’s most popular search engines for healthcare, and community hospital marketers should definitely take notice.
Community hospital marketing is entering a new era and the game is about to greatly change. The web has given patients the ability to shop for healthcare solutions, compare quality and be better informed. With 32 percent of YouTube viewers watching health videos, YouTube should dominate your social media plan.
Kevin Silverman, healthcare specialist and vice president of digital strategy for Ogilvy, noted some of the current trends in video watching:
- Of YouTube’s 180 million viewers, 32 percent watch health videos – more than food or even celebrity videos
- Of those viewers, 79 percent of health consumers have watched videos about their specific health condition
- 93 percent take action after viewing health information
- 69 percent conduct further online research as a result of the video they watched
- 60 percent interact with their doctor
Kevin had an opportunity to meet with the healthcare team at YouTube and learn more about what these trends mean for healthcare:
- YouTube, and online video sources provide an avenue to reach patients with condition specific information, which could include treatment options, and drive them to speak with their healthcare provider.
- Opportunities exist on YouTube to provide patients with branded messages in advance of the patient-doctor conversation.
- Providers and pharmaceutical companies have another opportunity to reach consumers who are actively interested in receiving information on their conditions and actively searching for information.
Particularly for community hospitals, I would add these to Kevin’s list:
- Tour of facilities
- Introductions of physicians and staff
- Outcomes
- Patient stories
- Surgeries and other procedures which help to educate patients
Check out the examples below to see how other hospitals are using YouTube to reach their patients:
- http://www.youtube.com/user/muschealth
- http://www.youtube.com/user/ETMC1
- http://www.youtube.com/childrenshospitals
- http://www.youtube.com/hcavirginia
What does this all mean for community hospitals?
“It means YouTube, and online video sources provide an avenue to reach patients with condition specific information, which could include treatment options, and drive them to speak with their healthcare provider,” said Silverman. “And, opportunities exist on YouTube to provide patients with branded messages in advance of the patient-doctor conversation.”
YouTube is an exciting and becoming an essential tool for marketing community hospitals.
Read Kevin’s entire article: “Looking to reach consumers in the healthcare space? Consider tuning into YouTube”
