This inspiring video came to my attention by way of Dr. Howard Lucks. Every time I watch it – I have done so several times – I become more inspired. Dr. Bridget Duffy, the Chief Patient Experience Officer for the Cleveland Clinic (how great is that title!) presented this talk at the Gel Conference. Dr. Duffy makes the case for elevating the patient experience to the same level of importance as clinical outcomes.

There are two concepts in particular that resonate with me from this talk. The first occurs around 21:45 when Dr. Duffy talks about “Code Lavender”. In her words, TV medical dramas have made us all familiar with a Code Blue, a patient in cardiac and/or respiratory arrest. A Code Lavender is when someone is emotional arrest – a patient, visitor, doctor, nurse, anyone in the hospital. Calling a code Lavender means that “everyone in the hospital stops and sends healing intention or prayer…” It is a powerful concept.

The second point that I find especially apt is an overall theme of the talk: creating a meaningful, positive, healing patient experience is the most important strategic goal a provider can have. “If you focus on that, [hand washing, clinical outcomes, quality, performance improvement] will come.”

At the end of her talk, Dr. Duffy slips in a key part of this plan, “listening to their needs.” I recently had cause to say to someone “I’m working with a patient to resolve a concern they have, this is the best part of my job, social media is just a way to get there.” Using these real time tools to connect with patients and improve their experience is truly what #HCSM is about to me. I am fortunate to work for an organization that has made experience a strategic goal. I get to see every day the impact it has.

Bridget Duffy at Gel Health 2009 from Gel Conference on Vimeo.

After a twenty year stint in the U.S. Air Force as a medical records expert, Bob Ross was destined for a life in healthcare social media. Somewhere he got sidetracked.  By some accounts it was when the Air Force stationed him at Eilson and he first saw snow-capped mountains. Destiny being the fickle force that it is took Bob’s life in another direction. Today very few of us think of Ross as an Health Information Management (HIM) guru. Instead we remember him as the the afro guy who had the painting show on PBS. But, I think, were he still with us today, Bob would confirm my suspicion that he was really just preparing us for the social web.

The Bob Ross Theory of Social Content Management is simple: Let your content live where it naturally wants to live and embed it in your own happy place.

Or, as I call it at work, the argument for having our own blog site. Social networks are by definition communities; and communities are all different. It is what makes life interesting. It is also what makes the initial entree into social networking a challenge for many healthcare organizations. Is it Facebook or Twitter? What about YouTube? Should we really be giving all that traffic away (does traffic really matter anymore)? The answer is more simple that it sounds. Let the content live where it wants to live and embed it on your blog.

Having a blog-type site is more than just having a place for long from posts. They are the blank canvas for our own social media oil painting. One of the biggest advantages of a content management system like WordPress is the ability to aggregate all of your social web efforts. With a blog site, or “social hub” as we have started calling our site, content like videos can live on sites like YouTube. The advantage is that you can present them on a site you own and control. It also lets you showcase them alongside your other social content like photos from Flickr, audio from AudioBoo, presentations from SlideShare, etc.

There is another distinct advantage to The Bob Ross Theory. As hospital web content expert Ed Bennett often points out, YouTube is the third most visited site online, making it the second biggest search engine (after its parent, Google). Ed is also quick to share the tip that the more information you populate about your video, the more likely it is to come back as a search result. Where else would a happy little video want to live? Once uploaded, you embed that video on your blog site and share your own link via twitter or facebook, but the video still lives on YouTube. It is the best of both worlds.

The Bob Ross Theory is not limited to videos. Flickr is the 34th most visited site and second largest photo site after Facebook. Lets put a happy little photo right there. Now add some tags, a description and presto, it becomes a search result on Yahoo!. When you want to share that photo or slide show, you embed it as a blog post and share that link.

Pretty soon your blog site is not such a blank canvas, it is full of happy content. When prompted with: ‘Bob, everything in your world seems to be happy.’ Ross replied: “That’s for sure. That’s why I paint. It’s because I can create the kind of world that I want, and I can make this world as happy as I want it.” 1

For more information on getting started with a blog site, take a look at Lee Aase’s SMUG site.

1 Wikipedia http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bob_Ross

Thanks to all those who participated:

• Dr. Jeff Livingston aka @macobgyn
• Christine Kraft  aka @christinekraft
• Dr. Val Jones aka @drval
  
• Jon Richman  aka @jonmrich
• Nick Dawson  aka @nickdawson
• Liza Sisler  aka @lizasisler
• Greg Matthews aka @chimoose

And a special thanks to the producers of the event:

• Meredith Gould aka @meredithgould
• Tom Stitt aka @tstitt

Finally, and to reiterate what I said at the top of my segment in the audio cast, thank you to the #HCSM community. In the last year we have laid the ground work that is changing the face of healthcare. Every day this group comes up with new ways to improve the patient experience. After all, we are all patients.

As an experiment, what is the first thing that comes to mind when you see this image?

How long does it take to register “STOP” in your mind? Probably longer even than it takes to put your foot on the brake. Call it Pavlovian, but the truth is that our brains are wired to process visual stimulus very quickly. The “decompression” of the meaning of a red octagon is highly efficient.It takes very little effort for us to decode the message behind the sign.

Now examine a sonnet from Shakespeare:

There are two challenges to texts as ethereally magical as those from Shakespeare. The first is the creation of the written words. To take a simple phrase – ‘I cannot figure out if it’s my heart or eyes that love you more’ and transform it into:

Mine eye and heart are at a mortal war
How to divide the conquest of thy sight

requires a substantial amount of intellect. The effort required to “compress” the emotional sentiment associated with the text is staggering. It is probably our appreciation for that effort that causes us to always conjure mental images of poets gazing into the distance, quill in hand, always thinking more than writing. It is not just poets that have the challenge. Writing is simply hard work. Ask any good editor . To take an idea and translate it into text that, hopefully, the majority of your audience can understand is not a simple thing. Your audience, in turn, has the job of decompressing what you have written and recompiling it into a cohesive thought. Its a lot more complicated that drawing a stop sign to write about something as complex as love.

Video has emerged as pretty comfortable middle ground in the compression/decompression challenge. From a decompression standpoint, videos require fairly low “processing power”. That explains why so many of us are glued to the TV every night. The entertainment value is high compared to the effort we have to put into it decoding it. Practically speaking, the “how two” video has a lot of advantages over a text book. Julia Child understood this very well. Showing someone how to truss a chicken is easier on both parties than writing about about it. To truss a chicken you first tuck the wing tips into and under the wings themselves. Then you have a complicated procedure of wrapping one long string around the bird in a way that both closes it up and forms the perfect roasting shape. On second though, let the folks at HowCast show you how…

Video, as it turns out, is pretty efficient in both compression and decompression as a means of interacting with media. It is worth noting that audio, as in the spoken word, also fits nicely into this niche. Both require less effort than text to create and less effort for an audience to decode.

In a healthcare setting, one of the biggest challenges to the adoption of social media is time. It is fairly easy to convince people they have something worthwhile to talk about. It is another thing to get them to take the time to do it. Doctors, executives, department heads, etc all have the same excuse “who has time to blog or tweet?” I wonder if what they mean is ‘I don’t want to have to write a term paper every week!’. But what about 30 second audio blip, or 2 minute video? How hard is it to stop a doctor in a hallway, stick a camera in their face and ask for three health tips? OK, maybe it feels funny to do it, but the effort required to capture that moment is pretty low. From an audience standpoint, no one has to read a bombastic (ahh humm, you are still right this, right?) post about health tips; you get the “how to” video and nothing else.

With that in mind, I present a Phil Baumann styled list of 10 things you can try for easily compressed and decompressed social media posts (in no particular order)

1. Sign up for AudioBoo - AudioBoo is a site that allows you to record (via computer or smartphone) an audio clip and instantly post to many social media sites.
2. “Three Words” campaign – every day, stop someone in the hall and record them giving their name, job and 3 words that, to them, represent the organization. Do themes, like heart month, and nursing week… Use audiboo, an iphone, a flip camera…
3. Doc on the spot – stop a doctor, record a 30 second health tip. Make sure the doctor mentions their specialty and how to follow up for more info. “Hi, I’m Doctor Jones with a quick tip for sleeping better…. want to know more, tweet us your questions…”
4. Roving reporters – Distribute inexpensive flip video cameras everywhere. They are inexpensive. Send them around the hospital and ask people to be “roving reporters” – every week, send out a theme or question and ask for people to interview co-workers. Compile the videos and post online
5. Physician updates – Imagine a family member in surgery. Have the doctor record updates as audio clips that can be shared with family members who are not in the waiting room.
6. CEO minute – a daily update from the CEO on the most important things on his desk that day. It is a glimpse into his world (and ultimately what is important for the organization). It does not take the CEO more than a minute to record, and the staff more than a minute to view. He or she can even produce it from his phone on the way to work.
7. Show the way – record a time-compressed video of how to drive from major intersections to medical practices.
8. Share the health – allow interested patients to record doctor advice during appointments including advantages and disadvantages of treatment options. Remember that your patients have a network too, help them help their friends (and it doesn’t hurt your image either)
9. Employee recognitions – record spontaneous employee recognitions. Have someone to recognize? Take a video camera, bundle of balloons and their boss along to that person’s work area. Record the recognition and share it – tag them on appropriate networks so their friends and family see how important they are to their employer.
10. Photo of the day – ask employees and fans/friends to contribute to a flickr pool. Re-broadcast one photo a day. Again, remember themes and important weeks.

Have some more suggestions? Post them in the comments!

A model of which I am increasingly in favor is the “Pipeline” approach. The pipeline is where many contributors funnel in various media (video, written posts, photos, etc) into the effort. Those contributions can live on which ever site is most appropriate (IE video on youtube) and be aggregated and embedded on a centralized, branded “social media hub”. Sharing.mayoclinic.org is a great example of a social hub. They then become the fodder of tweets, facebook updates, etc.

As interest in social media grows and marketing funds disappear, service lines and departments are clamoring for support. We answer that demand by asking those interested to become contributors – part of the funnel of content, the pipeline. When an department or service line is identified, we share a guideline document with them. The guide highlights the social media program and establishes expectations for time commitments and content.

The example below is not fancy or even complete (what about policies and a review process?) but it may help serve as a launching point for those creating their own pipeline of social media contributors. This is a de-identified and simplified version of the document we use internally, please forgive the generic name and branding. It can  be downloaded and used under the creative commons guidelines.

Social Sharing guidelines by Nick Dawson is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 3.0 United States License.
Based on a work at www.nickdawson.net.

Once a month, a who’s who of central Virginia healthcare execs convene for CVHEG – the Central Virginia Healthcare Executive Group. The CVHEG is the local chapter of the American College of Healthcare Executives. The group represents a wide swath of healthcare professionals. Recently, I was privileged to address the group as part of a fantastic lineup of speakers on social media and healthcare.

You can find my notes, references and presentation here.

Other panelists included:

• Candace Nicolls – Recruiting Manager at Ironworks Consulting
• Susan Salyer & Jeff Lasher from Spotsylvania  Regional Medical Center
• Chris Gatewood - Lawyer with the firm of Hirschler Fleischer

Now think about this – think about all the kids growing up in the socially networked generation. What happens when they grow up and have families of their own? Who gets to tell the history when it was already been documented live in real time? Its a mind-bender isn’t it? The children of the next generation, maybe even my kids, will have a digital history of our entire lives. Everything we posted, tweeted, flickred, youtubed, regretted, liked, friended, faned…. it will all be there. That embarrassing night in college, videos from our wedding, tweets about the first job. Imagine the internet as the scrapbook of the future. What will our kids find when they google us?

As I started thinking more about the idea – and indeed the importance of the concept itself – it made more sense (at least to my twisted brain) to explore it graphically:

To that end, you’ll probably enjoy this presentation in full screen here

There, I said ‘em.

Regardless of your feeling on metrics and ROI, they are a topic that will continue to crop up. Having a way to track interactions and participation in social media seems to be a reality for any healthcare organization. One of the ways to address ROI is by monitoring trends in interaction. While there is some subjective work in determining what constitutes a positive vs negative interaction, the results are solid enough when presented over time. If French is the language of love then spreadsheets are surely the language of management.

Below is a link to the dashboard spreadsheet that my organization is using. It is homegrown and inspired in part by conversations with Dana Lewis.

SM Metrics Template 20090930 – Excel

Google Spreadsheet Version

The template is in MS Excel 2003 format, and there is a link to a Google Spreadsheet version as well. It is distributed under the creative commons license as follows:

SM Metrics Template by Nick Dawson is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 3.0 United States License.

It is an exciting time for healthcare. We are at once in the midst of a national discussion on the challenges the industry faces and experiencing a boom in advances in how we care for patients. There has never been a more important time for our healthcare leaders and organizations to speak up, develop a voice, and cultivate one-to-one relationships.

More than anything I am anxious to hear your feedback. Please leave me a comment or drop me a note on twitter. What did you think of the article? Is your organization using social media, if so how is it working for you?

If Social Pulse and the other articles in The Ireland Report piqued you interest, then I invite you to do some continued reading on healthcare social media.

• Social Pulse – you can find a PDF of the white paper here
• Social Media ROI – ways to present, measure and pay for a social media program
• The Mr. Rogers approach – asking patients and employees to be your friend
• My Blog -  miscellaneous healthcare social media posts

  _____

• The Mayo Clinic on Social Media
• Ed Bennett on healthcare social media
• “The Sunday Night Chat” – #HCSM is one of the largest group chats on twitter and its all about healthcare and social media, hosted by the remarkable Dana Lewis
• List of hospitals using social media – also from Ed Bennett
• Phil Baumann’s blog – as referenced in the article
• Paul Levy’s Running a Hospital – Paul is the CEO of Beth Israel in Boston, also cited in the article

_______

Of course, if you came here looking for ramblings about food and DIY meat curing and smoking, there’s plenty of that to go around as well.