Ed Bennett of University of Maryland Medical System is famous for his list of hospitals using social media. 
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Web Strategy, University of Maryland Medical System
Hospitals and Social Media - What's Working? Ed Bennett reviews current trends in Hospital Social Media use, looking at what&s working (and not working) for these organizations.
1100 Hospitals are listed and over 4,000 Social Media resources.
The vast majority are using for Customer Service, Public Relations. This is traditional role of outreach.
Blogs are a very small slice of social media presence. Yet they are the cornerstone of a social media presence.
YouTube continues to grow steadily. Twitter exploded in January 2009.
Social Media is disruptive
Risk Averse / Risk taking
Authoritative / Reputation
Privacy and Strictly Regulated / Anyone can publish anything
Tightly controlled / Freely Distributed
HIPAA and PHI regulations
The Placenta Incident - 4 students expelled for publishing a photo to Facebook. Court case led to reinstatement.
UMMS - Opened social media access at the hospital.
Access is a major stumbling block. How can you have a presence when access is blocked.
Patients want to connect to their support networks in their time of need. Yet access was blocked. After a year of work they were able to open up.
This created a demand from teams to create support groups for patients. These are closed groups for patients only. A mix of closed and secret groups.
How much does Social Media Cost:
Almost nothing - mainly resource cost. Most tools are free or very low cost and much lower than costs for traditional video production.
HIPAA - Patients have a right to free speech. Which they use. Hospitals just have to be careful when responding to patients.
This is nothing new. Much is to do with employee education and training about appropriate behavior when interacting with patients.
