Advantages and Disadvantages of Using Social Media in Health Care Marketing

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Advantages and Disadvantages of Using Social Media in Health Care Marketing

What are the advantages and disadvantages of using social media in health care marketing?

Assignment Details Discussion Post Patients are using social media sites now more than ever. Hospitals are using social media channels to answer patient questions and provide immediate customer service. Social media are becoming a part of marketing strategy.

What are the advantages and disadvantages of using social media in health care marketing?

The post should be at least 200 words using 2-3 substantive paragraphs. With academic/professional references published in the last 5 years. APA 7 format. Title- Market Plan Development Due 2/2/21.

The term social media is defined as a method that individuals can utilize to share content and data through discussion and communication using various different internet platforms. Social media in healthcare has many advantages. Advantages and Disadvantages of Using Social Media in Health Care Marketing. It can be used as a tool to communicate effectively with the public, improve the overall patient experience and most importantly increasing the access to care. With advantages, there will also be some challenges. Some challenges will include the privacy and confidentiality of patient health information, professionalism, lack of time, risks of distributing incorrect health information, and cultural problems that could affect the extent to which doctors are prepared to interact with their patients (Al-Qahtani, Alsaffar, Alshammasi, Alsanni, Alyousef, & Alhussaini, 2018).

There are five major roles in healthcare when incorporating social media and they are the patients, physicians, hospitals, payers to include employers and health plans and most importantly health information technology (Davenport, 2014). Each stakeholder plays a different role and has a different responsibility when referring to social media and healthcare. From an ethical standpoint, patients are responsible for their own health and cost control. With social media, a patient can engage and participate in discussions that pertains to their health and to also promote living a healthier lifestyle (Healthcare Reform, 2011). Physicians play a main role in ensuring appropriate healthcare for their patients. Physicians can use social media to develop a professional network, raise personal awareness of news and discoveries, motivate patients and provide the community with health information (De Martino, D’Apolito, McLawhorn, Fehring, Sculco, & Gasparini, 2017). Advantages and Disadvantages of Using Social Media in Health Care Marketing.When Hospitals incorporate social media, it will benefit them by increasing revenue, recruiting employees and improving customer satisfaction. With social media platforms such as Facebook, other facilities such as non-profit hospitals can use it to promote health and disease prevention at a low cost while promoting engagement with consumers (Richter, Muhlestein, & Wilks, 2014). Health Information Technology (HIT) and social media working together can patients and healthcare providers to share decision-making and coordinating the proper care. The use of apps for example can help to monitor a patients’ sleep pattern promote healthier living habits. As a result, healthcare expenses can be reduced.

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Healthcare organizations are using social media for practice improvement for multiple reasons such as improving visibility in the organization; marketing products and services, providing patient resources and education, but also providing customer support. Studies have shown that using social media can significantly improve a medical center or hospital’s picture and visibility. According to Ventola, in one research study, 57% of customers said that the social media presence of a hospital would have a major impact on their decision of where to go for services (Ventola, 2014).

In conclusion, social media is a tool that is used to provide information and analyze data through multiple platforms. It also helps healthcare organizations with sharing data, engaging with the public and educating and interacting with patients. Practice improvement involves social media to not promote and market products, but also to provide resources for patients and provide quality care.

References

Al-Qahtani, M., Alsaffar, A., Alshammasi, A., Alsanni, G., Alyousef, Z., & Alhussaini, M. (2018). Social media in healthcare: Advantages and challenges perceived by patients at a teaching hospital in eastern province, Saudi Arabia. Advantages and Disadvantages of Using Social Media in Health Care Marketing.Saudi Journal for Health Sciences, 7(2), 116–120. https://doi-org.proxy-library.ashford.edu/10.4103/sjhs.sjhs_36_18
Davenport, T. H. (Ed). (2014). Analytics in Healthcare and the Life Sciences: Strategies, Implementation, Methods, and Best Practices. Upper Saddle River, NJ: International Institute for Analytics, Pearson Publisher.
De Martino, I., D’Apolito, R., McLawhorn, A. S., Fehring, K. A., Sculco, P. K., & Gasparini, G. (2017). Social media for patients: benefits and drawbacks. Current reviews in musculoskeletal medicine, 10(1), 141–145. doi:10.1007/s12178-017-9394-7
Healthcare Reform. (2011). Health Care Reform: Duties and Responsibilities of the Stakeholders. Retrieved from https://sites.sju.edu/icb/health-care-reform-duties-and-responsibilities-of-the-stakeholders/
Richter, J. P., Muhlestein, D. B., & Wilks, C. E. A. (2014). Social Media: How Hospitals Use It, and Opportunities for Future Use. Journal of Healthcare Management, 59(6), 447–460. Retrieved from http://search.ebscohost.com.proxy-library.ashford.edu/login.aspx?direct=true&AuthType=ip,cpid&custid=s8856897&db=ccm&AN=107839717&site=ehost-live
Ventola C. L. (2014). Social media and health care professionals: benefits, risks, and best practices. P & T : a peer-reviewed journal for formulary management, 39(7), 491–520.

Many social media tools are available for health care professionals (HCPs), including social networking platforms, blogs, microblogs, wikis, media-sharing sites, and virtual reality and gaming environments.¹^–⁸ These tools can be used to improve or enhance professional networking and education, organizational promotion, patient care, patient education, and public health programs.³^,⁵^–¹⁰ However, they also present potential risks to patients and HCPs regarding the distribution of poor-quality information, damage to professional image, breaches of patient privacy, violation of personal–professional boundaries, and licensing or legal issues.²^–⁴^,⁸^,¹⁰^–¹⁷ Many health care institutions and professional organizations have issued guidelines to prevent these risks.³^,⁴^,⁷^,¹⁰^,¹⁷^,¹⁸

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WHAT ARE SOCIAL MEDIA?

The definition of “social media” is broad and constantly evolving. The term generally refers to Internet-based tools that allow individuals and communities to gather and communicate; to share information, ideas, personal messages, images, and other content; and, in some cases, to collaborate with other users in real time.²^–⁶ Social media are also referred to as “Web 2.0” or “social networking.” ⁵

Social media sites provide a variety of features that serve different purposes for the individual user.¹⁹ They may include blogs, social networks, video- and photo-sharing sites, wikis, or a myriad of other media, which can be grouped by purpose, serving functions such as:⁴^,⁷^,⁸

Social networking (Facebook, MySpace, Google Plus, Twitter)
Professional networking (LinkedIn)
Media sharing (YouTube, Flickr)
Content production (blogs [Tumblr, Blogger] and microblogs [Twitter])
Knowledge/information aggregation (Wikipedia)
Virtual reality and gaming environments (Second Life)

Participation in social media by the general public has increased sharply over the past nine years.⁵^,¹¹ In the U.S., the proportion of adults using social media has increased from 8% to 72% since 2005.⁵^,¹¹ The use of social media is prevalent across all ages and professions and is pervasive around the world.²^,⁸ In 2012, Facebook users exceeded one billion people worldwide, a number that represents one-seventh of the world’s population.²^,⁸ In addition, each day 100 million active Twitter users send more than 65 million tweets, and two billion videos are viewed on YouTube.² Social media have been linked to highly significant political events, such as the Arab Spring revolution, as well as to widespread societal trends, including the shortening of individuals’ attention spans and the decline of print news media.^{5 Advantages and Disadvantages of Using Social Media in Health Care Marketing.}

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PARTICIPATION IN SOCIAL MEDIA BY HEALTH CARE PROFESSIONALS

Social media provide HCPs with tools to share information, to debate health care policy and practice issues, to promote health behaviors, to engage with the public, and to educate and interact with patients, caregivers, students, and colleagues.⁶^,¹¹^,¹⁴^,¹⁶ HCPs can use social media to potentially improve health outcomes, develop a professional network, increase personal awareness of news and discoveries, motivate patients, and provide health information to the community.⁸^,¹¹

Physicians most often join online communities where they can read news articles, listen to experts, research medical developments, consult colleagues regarding patient issues, and network.⁹ There they can share cases and ideas, discuss practice management challenges, make referrals, disseminate their research, market their practices, or engage in health advocacy.¹⁴^,¹⁵ A growing minority of physicians also uses social media to communicate directly with patients to augment clinical care.⁹^,¹⁵

A survey of more than 4,000 physicians conducted by the social media site QuantiaMD found that more than 90% of physicians use some form of social media for personal activities, whereas only 65% use these sites for professional reasons.⁹^,¹⁴ Nearly a third of physicians have reported participating in social networks.⁸ However, both personal and professional use of social media by physicians is increasing.³^,⁹^,¹⁵

Unlike physicians, pharmacists have been relatively slow to adopt social media.¹ Much of the growth in the professional use of social media among this group appears to involve pharmacist-specific social networks.¹ Surveys have shown that many pharmacists use Facebook.¹ Although this use is most often for personal communications, more than 90 pages on Facebook are related to the pharmacy profession, such as the Pharmacists Interest Page, the American Pharmacists Association, and the Cynical Pharmacist.¹ Only 10% of pharmacists use Twitter, and a search for “pharmacist” on LinkedIn identified 274,981 profiles.¹

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SOCIAL MEDIA SITES FOR HEALTH CARE PROFESSIONALS

Social Networking Sites

As social networking has evolved, medically focused professional communities have been established.¹⁴ These networks are often private and protected from nonmembers, such as the lay public and even members of other health professions.¹ Funding sources for these sites vary, with financial support often being provided by professional associations, advertising or data sales, research funding, and pharmaceutical companies.¹⁷

Sermo is a “physician-only” social networking community that verifies the credentials of new members during registration.¹⁵ Physicians representing 68 specialties in all 50 states gather on this site to network, to discuss treatment options, and to query peers for expert advice.¹⁵ As of April 2014, Sermo boasted a U.S. membership of 260,000 physicians, most of whom use pseudonyms for anonymity. Sermo consists primarily of a large message board on which physicians create topics for discussion.¹⁴ It also provides a rating system by which doctors rank posts on the site on the basis of perceived credibility.¹⁵

Doximity is a newer “physician-only” social networking community that offers text and images that are compliant with the Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act (HIPAA), which allows point-of-care information crowdsourcing.¹⁵ As of 2013, more than 100,000 physicians and students were members. Advantages and Disadvantages of Using Social Media in Health Care Marketing. Doximity uses a national database to create “placeholder” accounts with demographic and contact information for all U.S. physicians. Therefore, although only 12% of U.S. physicians are active members of Doximity, nearly 100% can be messaged through the network.¹⁴

The Medical Directors Forum (www.medicaldirectorsforum.skipta.com) is a social networking site for medical directors that provides a verified, secure, closed-loop environment for peer-to-peer interaction. The resources on this site include a comprehensive library, discussion groups, calendar postings, and alerts. The site also provides dedicated group pages for medical directors working in a wide range of sectors, including: hospital, veterans affairs, Medicare, group practice, employer, behavioral health, managed care, correctional facility, and long-term care.²⁰

Other physician networking sites include QuantiaMD (www.quantiamd.com), Doctors’ Hangout (www.doctorshangout.com), and Doc2Doc (doc2doc.bmj.com).¹⁷ Many of these sites require doctors to submit their credentials to a site gatekeeper, recreating the intimacy of a “physicians’ lounge” in an online environment.¹⁷

The nonprofit Student Doctor Network is a popular social community site for undergraduate and practicing physicians, dentists, and veterinarians in the U.S. and Canada.⁵ It claims more than 40,000 active members and 1.5 million unique monthly visitors.⁵ The forums on Student Doctor Network focus on clinical career topics, do not support detailed user profiles or “friending,” and encourage anonymity.⁵

Social networking sites are also available for pharmacists. These sites include ASHP Connect (www.connect.ashp.org), which is sponsored by the American Society of Health-System Pharmacists; PharmQD (www.pharmqd.com); and The Pharmacist Society (www.pharmacistsociety.com).¹^,⁶ Professional networking forums for nurses include the American Nurses Association’s ANANurseSpace (www.ananursespace.org), NursingLink (www.nursinglink.com), and SocialRN (www.twitter.com/socialRN).¹⁷

In addition, HCPs can easily connect with each other via “general purpose” online social networks, such as Facebook, Twitter, and LinkedIn.⁸ Facebook is the most popular social media site in the U.S., while LinkedIn is the most popular professional networking site.¹^,¹¹^,¹⁷

Blogs

The “blog,” a term formed by truncating “Web log,” is the oldest and most established form of social media, which has been used in medicine since as early as 2004.¹⁷ Blogs can reach wide audiences, especially if one writes content that is of significant interest.¹⁴ Posts that garner enough interest can be shared and viewed again and again by readers (referred to as “going viral”).¹⁴ Content that goes viral can establish a reputation or an online presence.¹⁴

Blogs can also provide the opportunity to publish large amounts of information in a variety of media (text, video, and audio) in an open forum.¹⁴ Most blogging platforms allow readers to respond to published content by posting their own comments.¹⁴ This enables an ongoing dialogue between the blogger and his or her audience.¹⁴ Examples of widely used free “long-form” blogging platforms include Tumblr (www.tumblr.com), WordPress (www.wordpress.org), and Blogger (www.blogger.com).¹⁴

Some physicians use blogs to communicate with other HCPs or the public.¹⁴ For example, the Clinical Cases blog (www.clinicalcases.org) features case studies in a wide range of medical specialties.¹⁷ This blog also includes a special section on admission note templates, procedure guides, and related material.¹⁷ Blogs are becoming more popular among pharmacists, but approximately two-thirds of these blogs are written anonymously.¹

Microblogs

Microblogs provide the most dynamic and concise form of information exchange via social media.¹⁷ This format allows users to post a large number of brief messages or updates over a short period.¹⁷ Numerous microblogging platforms exist; however, Twitter is the most prominent.¹⁷ On Twitter, users publish messages (called “tweets”) that consist of a maximum of 140 characters.¹⁷ Tweets can be supplemented with hyperlinks to other online media, such as videos or websites.¹⁷ Tweets can also include “hashtags,” a form of information indexing that allows people to search for tweets that are related to a particular discussion or topic.¹⁷ Hashtags followed by HCPs include #HCSM (for Health Care Social Media), #MDChat, and #Health20.¹⁷

There are more than 140 reported uses for Twitter in health care.¹⁷ The Penn State College of Medicine has used Twitter to facilitate discussions between students and instructors, to conduct course evaluations, to solicit class responses, and to monitor students’ progress.¹⁷ A Twitter Journal Club also provides advance posts about papers and questions to be discussed, along with a hashtag, so that students, doctors, and anyone interested in the subject can interact.¹⁷ Twitter has also been used at medical conferences to discuss and enhance speaker presentations by posting real-time comments from the audience.¹⁷ Some physicians have used Twitter to develop a large following, enabling them to reach a broad audience and potentially even affect health policy decisions.¹⁴

Wikis

Wikis are public forum websites featuring text and multimedia content that can be edited by users.¹⁷ “Wiki” is a Hawaiian word meaning “quick,” which refers to the speed with which information on a wiki can be accessed, added, edited, or deleted.¹⁷

Surprisingly, Wikipedia is the most commonly used wiki in the medical community.¹⁷ It is often used as a reference by clinicians, despite its known shortcomings, such as errors and narrow breadth of information.⁵ One study found that 35% of 1,056 pharmacists used Wikipedia, although only 19% trusted it.⁵ In another survey of more than 1,000 pharmacists, one in five respondents said they trusted Wikipedia, but only one in four knew that anyone could edit the site.^{1Advantages and Disadvantages of Using Social Media in Health Care Marketing.} One reason for the popularity of Wikipedia is its prominence in Google searches.⁵ A study found that 70% of 35 junior physicians used Wikipedia to find medical information during a week-long period, with 93% citing ease of use as their primary motivation.⁵

As the accuracy and completeness of Wikipedia are often debated, the drug information on that site was compared with a validated and trusted information source, the Medscape Drug Reference.¹⁷ This analysis found that Wikipedia included approximately 76% of the content found in Medscape and had very few factual errors (most were errors of omission).¹⁷ In contrast, other studies have found that Wikipedia includes factual errors and has a lack of depth compared to traditionally edited, peer-reviewed, evidence-based information sources.¹^,²¹

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Other wiki projects emulate Wikipedia in that they crowd-source medical content. However, to maintain editorial credibility, they also verify the credentials of contributors.⁵ RxWiki (www.rxwiki.com) allows only pharmacists to add or edit drug information.¹ This was also the model for Medpedia (an initiative from Harvard University, Stanford University, the University of Michigan, and the University of California at Berkeley), which verified authors’ credentials before allowing them to generate content.¹⁷ However, when most articles posted on “author verified” wikis were compared with open initiatives, such as Wikipedia, they were found to be shorter, to be of equal or lesser quality, and to include fewer references.¹⁷ Wikipedia was also found to promote quality and accuracy more actively over a period of 90 days because of crowdsourcing, compared with Medpedia, which had a comparatively restrictive editorial process.¹⁷

Media-Sharing Sites

Media-sharing sites, such as YouTube, offer a large selection of social media tools that are optimized for viewing, sharing, and embedding digital media content on the Web.¹⁷ They also provide features that are typically found on other types of social media sites, such as profiles, connections, comments, and private messaging.¹⁷ Most media-sharing sites are easy to use, provide free basic accounts, and are accessible from both desktop and mobile devices.¹⁷

In medicine, media-sharing sites can be important resources for education, community building, marketing, and branding.¹⁷ Among the most notable media-sharing sites for HCPs is The Doctors’ Channel (www.thedoctorschannel.com), which hosts videos featuring medical news, continuing medical education, and health care-related entertainment.¹⁷

Virtual Reality and Gaming Environments

Multi-User Virtual Environments (MUVEs) are three-dimensional environments that allow users to interact with each other through a virtual representation of themselves (known as an avatar).¹⁷ The application of MUVEs in health care is growing rapidly. They are increasingly being used for patient education, for the simulation of epidemiology and mass prophylaxis, for psychotherapy, for surgery, and for research.¹⁷ However, the fact that MUVEs are often perceived as computer games rather than as serious clinical tools may impede their adoption by health care institutions.¹⁷

MUVEs can be classified as general-purpose or health care–specific.¹⁷ The most well-known general-purpose MUVE is Second Life. This general-purpose environment, however, is often used for health care education.¹⁷ One study found 68 health-related virtual locations on Second Life.¹⁷ These included the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) education center, which aims to influence the real-life decision-making abilities of visitors.¹⁷ Health care–specific MUVEs are typically used for one purpose, such as medical education (e.g., CliniSpace [www.clinispace.com]), surgical simulation (e.g., OpenSim [www.opensimulator.org]), or psychiatric treatment (e.g., InWorld Solutions [www.inworldsolutions.net]).¹⁷

Advantages and Disadvantages of Using Social Media in Health Care Marketing