As social media matures and more healthcare groups gain experience using it, we understand more about it and the role it will play in the future of healthcare.
Last week, Abraham and I gave a program called “Starting the Conversation: An Introduction to Using Social Media In Healthcare” to a group of healthcare managers. We discussed social media’s potential to influence patient satisfaction, which is expected to influence reimbursement.
I had a great time recently when Joe Hage of Medical MarCominterviewed me during a Twitter Chat. The topic was how medical device reps could help specialty physicians market to primary care physicians. You can read the interviewhere at Joe’s blog.
So, what is a Twitter Chat? It’s a one-hour event that gathers together Twitter users with a specific interest to share a discussion 140 characters at a time.
Twitter chats are organized by hashtags, and in this case, the discussion was marked by the hashtag #MedDevice. #MedDevice is facilitated by Joe Hage (@MedicalMarCom is Joe’s Twitter name) who is the founder and CEO of a medical devices marketing consulting firm specializing in marketing communications, marketing strategy, lead generation, web development, and social media.
My husband and I are away this weekend attending blogging camp. No, we’re not at a logging camp, we’re at blogging camp. If you remember, hubby and I both launched blogs in July (you’re reading mine right now,) so we’re newbies trying to learn more and meet others who are blogging. My passion is taking interesting ideas from other worlds and applying them to mine. Here are a few things I’m taking away:
I just joined Twitter. This means I can communicate with others and they know what I’m doing and I can find out what they are doing via text messages. As I explore this more I’ll write about it. I’d like to use Twitter at MGMA in San Diego in October. If anyone out there is going to MGMA and using Twitter, please get in touch with me by leaving a comment, or emailing me at marypatwhaley@gmail.com.
Some who know me will say I am obsessed with toilet paper dispensers and hand towel dispensers and they would be correct. My theory is: If you’re not paying attention to the tissue and hand towel dispensers (the little things) in your practice, you probably aren’t paying attention to the big things. More on this topic later as I am building out a new site for my practice and will write about making design and fixture choices in the future. Anyway, the conference we’re attending is being held at CubeSpace which is a very cool place where folks can come and use workstations and technology. The bathroom here has a very cool hand towel dispenser (picture above) that you work with your forearm! I will be checking it out for my new office.
Backchannels are the new intranets. I am working on a knowledge management tool for my practice to help document important information that tends to be lost when staff leave the practice. I got some different ideas about accomplishing this goal from camp.
The camp presentations were also streamed live and I learned a little about vlogging (video blogging.) The last time I thought about making an orientation video I was told it would probably cost $10,000! With some practice, I think my staff and I can make “videos” for just about any topic. We can do video tours of our facilities for our website, we can film our meetings for absent staff, we can do narrated PowerPoint presentations.
