Patient experience for hospitals, includes the perception of the organization (the brand promise), the first interaction, the environment, all aspects of any visit, the ongoing relationship, inspiration, the roles and behaviors of the staff, and so on (Mark Tomazewicz). The Patient has numerous touch points with the hospital – and his overall patient experience, is based on the experiences he has at each of these individual touch points. Whether he is looking up the hospital website, or seeking opinions from the people he trusts or is interacting with the customer services over phone, when is he actually visiting the hospital for either his own care or to accompany some one else, when he receives the bills from the hospital, when he is involved in follow-up consultations, the patient is undergoing a series of positive or negative experiences and all of this adds up to the total experience. Sometimes, these touch points may be “Virtual” – in the sense that, the patient is not really interacting with the hospital directly – A patient seeking the opinion of friends about the hospital or when he looks up information from the internet. Another aspect in the conventional world was that most of this touch points were “Active” – these occurred when the patient initiated it.

Social media – like facebook, twitter etc., definitely has extended the patient experience, by adding a large number of additional touch points for the patient. Additionally, not all of them are “Active” touch points; these could be “Passive” as well for the patient. The patient may be exposed to information about the hospital although he may not actively be seeking it. For example, a disgruntled patient may tweet about his bad experiences in a hospital to all his followers. It is important to understand that dynamics of social media are quite different from conventional media – it highly Propogative – meaning, any information travels very fast and to a much wider audience than conventional information channels. It is Persuasive as well, with strong evidence pointing out to this fact. Additionally social media is Persistent. A negative piece of information generated years ago could influence patients even now. Social media also has high Reach, meaning information reaches world wide. Social media is highly Collaborative – it involves a high degree of collaboration amongst its participants. And, results are more Measurable in social media, as compared to any conventional media. 


The increasing use of social media in today's world, present new and exciting opportunities for hospitals, to create and manage an "Extended" patient experience. Many hospitals have already begun tapping the power of social media already for various reasons - for instance - Henry Ford Hospital in Detroit, has used twitter to provide live updates on a robotic surgery (Link: http://www.ihealthbeat.org/Articles/2009/2/10/Hospital-Uses-Twitter-To-Provide-RealTime-Updates-on-Surgery.aspx) and later used youtube for sharing the video as well. This is definitely not a one off case - as many as 730 hospitals listed on this particular website, are all now using social media - with 337 youtube channels, 513 facebook pages, 549 twitter accounts and 95 blogs (http://ebennett.org/hsnl-full/). There are a large number of channels available in social media - social networking sites (facebook), microblogs (twitter), blogs, content sharing (flickr, youtube), message boards and forums, podcasts and RSS feeds The most commonly used web media in healthcare are of course (should not be very difficult to guess) - facebook, twitter, youtube and blogs. The numbers are really impressive, and do indicate that hospitals have already passed the "Early Adoption" stage

Hospitals can harness the power of social media – to create additional “Active” or “Passive” touch points, and positively extend the patient experience. There are plenty of additional touch points the hospital can create – like – information updates (for ex: may be a new breakthrough surgical procedure or a more potent drug), hospital related updates (for ex.introduction of a new service line or an event) , patient education, managing patient relationships (for ex. may be a simple birthday wish on patient’s 35^th birthday with an alert reminding the patients to have their blood glucose screened for diabetes hence forth), customer service (for ex. listening and responding to patient issues more effectively), crisis management (for ex. twitter updates regarding crises – like disease outbreaks etc.,), physician patient communication channels (twitter updates?) and so on. These touch points provide additional opportunities to hospitals to communicate and reinforce their brand message, correct any negative perception, strengthen patient relationships and build brand loyalty. Healthcare is a high experience service, and the brand image, brand perception and brand loyalty are all centered around the patient experience. Additionally social media can provide valuable inputs, with regard to brand perception, any negative or positive sentiment being propagated and competitive intelligence and so on.

While many hospitals are already present on the social media, most of these hospitals look at social media merely as a communication platform or as additional avenues for advertising. Not many have realized that each of the extended patient touch points, are part of an integral whole. The overall patient experience today begins even before the patient actually needs and obtains some service from the hospitals and possibly never even ends (virtual).Thus while the “Real” patient experience is discrete, the “Virtual” patient experience is a continuous and on going process, and influences the “Real” experience. Thus both will have to be part of an integral whole – an integrated patient experience vision for the hospital. Social media strategy should also be integrated with the overall hospital marketing and the operational strategies. While the basic principle of social media – is to have a direct and straight conversation with the patients, hospitals will need to be careful about what gets communicated during these conversations. Patients have become more and more discerning, and any incongruence between a projected “Virtual” experience and the “Real” patient experience may have a serious negative impact on the hospital - it can be easily picked up the ever so discerning patients on social media, and could get propagated (twittered?). Another aspect hospitals will need to consider – is having effective feedback mechanisms in place. Social media, as I have mentioned before, is more measurable, and hospitals could do well to make use of this fact (google analytics, facebook analytics…). Each patient experience touch-point will need to be constantly monitored. Social media provide hospitals with multiple channels (social networks (facebook), blogs, microblogs, Q&A sites, podcasts, RSS feeds, message boards, forums and communities, content sharing sites and so on) and optimization of channels is another critical aspect, hospitals need to be sensitive about.

Some social media strategy success stories: http://www.launchyourmovement.com/2010/04/10-hospital-social-media-success-stories/