Hospitals have attempted to monitor employee social media use at work by blocking sites like Facebook, Twitter and YouTube.  While this prevents employees from using hospital computers to access these sites, it can’t stop employees from using personal computers and smart phones to share information about work, i.e. your hospital.  When you can’t abolish social media usage, you can definitely implement restrictions.  Developing a social media policy for your hospital will outline the right and wrong ways your employees can engage with social media.

HealthLeaders Media shared these 5 tips to guide your hospital social media policy:

Innovative hospitals are using rich media and social media channels to increase awareness amongst the media and patients. Here’s a video from Ragan TV that features Jill Fazakerly, marketing director for Methodist University Hospital of Memphis, talking about how a brain surgery webcast resulted in a New York Times article, new patients, speaking engagements and increased their sphere of influence:

If your hospital has developed innovative social media marketing methods or strategies, please share your stories with us. We’d love to write about you. Email us at: tips at healthcareos dot com