The Big Picture

Health care community managers and the future of patient engagement

I recently spoke to Mississippi Healthcare Executives, the Mississippi chapter of the American College of Healthcare Executives. The purpose of my short session was to convince them to use MHA Connect, my association's online community. I could have focused on the fact that they could win an iPad if they logged on by June and our Leadership Conference. I could have explained that they have complete access to our online database on our smartphone app. I could have bribed them to log in to see all of the presentations from their two-day meeting. (And, OK, I did that too.)

But I spent most of my time explaining that they should go log on and see what the online community is all about because I could see (in the not so distant future) most of them managing people that manned similar online communities for their own hospitals and health care organizations. "The full potential of consumer e-health is far from realized and may not even yet be fully understood," Office of Consumer eHealth Director Lygeia Ricciardi and other Office of the National Coordinator for Health IT write in February's Health Affairs edition, dedicated to the "new era of patient engagement."

Online patient portals are growing. Even some of my own physicians are using them. But mostly just to distribute test results, not for any active kind of communication or engagement. (There is a difference between a patient portal and a patient community.) Patients with chronic conditions are often creating their own communities online to get the engagement they want and need. (So if you don't build it, they will come too. Just somewhere else, not to your website.)

Through Stage 2 meaningful use incentives, the ONC is furthering the idea of online patient enagement. Starting in October for hospitals and next January for eligible physicians, providers must have secure email available to patients, as well as offer ways to view, download, or share the information.

In its January report, Engaging Health Care Users: A Framework for Health Individuals and Communities, the American Hospital Association outlines the future of health care engagement as  focusing on "current and emerging technologies that will facilitate patient, family and provider interactions; health education; treatments and overall engagement" and "social media and its role as a means to enhance communication and networking with individual and communities."

Sounds kind of just like an online community to me!

Continue the Conversation

 

BackType lets you “find, follow and share comments from across the web.” Whenever you fill out the URL in a blog’s comment form, BackType tracks it. You can use BackType to keep track of your own comments, follow the others of leaders in your industry, or keep track of what is being said about your association in blog comments.

[ via pr-squared.com ]

Obama To Post Fireside Chats On YouTube

 

The weekly radio address that every president has done since FDR will be videotaped and put onto YouTube. These “fireside chats” were started by FDR during the depression as a way to reassure Americans that everything was going to be all right.

The Presidential radio address (which will still be broadcast over the radio) is usually only about four minutes long, a perfect length for YouTube. The videos will be posted on Obama's Change.Gov web site, as well as its dedicated YouTube channel.

[ via TechCrunch ] 

The Cost of Free

The ABC Evening News recently aired a segment on companies using Twitter to handle customer service issues (in response to long hold times on phones). Comcast, which handles customer service issues on Twitter too, was spotlighted in the piece. But it clarified for me exactly why I have not jumped on the Twitter bandwagon for the association.

I had considered using Twitter to push advocacy updates to members' mobile phones during our legislative session but had hesitations because of Twitter's excessive downtime. My fear is that most members (the majority of which have never used Twitter) would not be able to understand the difference between Twitter's "downtime" and the association's. So if I, as a member, miss an important advocacy update because Twitter is down, I don't think, "Twitter is down. What a bummer." I think "My association let me down. I missed an important advocacy update."

But I'm thankful for Twitter's downtime really, because it has made me examine all of the "free" third-party apps that I jumped at quickly because they were "free." And free is good.

But it has made me examine a little further: What cost free-dom?

CoverItLive!

If you cover live events often in your blog (and most of us do), you need to know about a new, free service, CoverItLive.

With CoverItLive, your commentary streams live to your Web page or blog (so you could also live blog your own conference for members and have it posted on your Web site). Readers viewing the commentary can ask questions and participate in polls you create - and, best of all, they don't have to create user accounts or download any software to participate.

While blogging, you can also add pictures and videos in real-time. 

[ via ReadWriteWeb ]

Google Checkout Available For Political Contributions

Political candidates can now use Google Checkout to collect contributions online. The new feature allows candidates (registered with the Federal Election Commission) to embed Checkout buttons on their Web sites, blogs and social networking profiles to begin taking donations. The feature also lets candidates capture contributor occupation and employer information, and includes a policy message within the process.

Google charges 2% of donations plus a 20 cent transaction fee. Google Checkout joins other services such as PayPal and ActBlue allowing political donations online.

Google Checkout also lets non-profits collect donations online.

Politweets as usual

Politweets scours Twitter for information on presidential nominees...so you don't have to. 

Monetizing PDF content

In November, Adobe and Yahoo partnered to create Ads for Adobe PDF. It's a free service that lets you earn money by placing ads in your PDF files. (The ads are text and are served from Yahoo! advertisers based on content.)

You simply upload your PDF and earn money based on inserted ads. (You do have the ability to block competitors.)

With more and more associations searching for ways to monetize Web content, this may be something useful for your association to explore.

You can apply to join the program here.

[ via Kevin Kelly ]

How Associations Can Use Twitter

I started using Twitter on a whim. (I actually created an MHA Twitter account long before I created a personal one - I just never posted anything to it.)

It seems I do better using new technology personally first. Then I slowly begin to realize the business applications. But I've immersed myself in Twitter for a few months now, and I'm ready to report back on how you can add it to your association's Web mix.

• Advocacy - Lobbyists can post updates during a legislative session via cell phone - as they happen. "Call 800.000.000 now and tell legislator to vote no on S. 2345!" "Health Committee Conference at 2:30 p.m. in Room 101."
• Link blog - If you've ever wanted a place to store interesting links for your members - without much in-depth discussion (as you're limited to 140 characters) - Twitter would be a good application. And Typepad has a Twitter widget that will let you seamlessly add it to your Web site.
• Blog Referrer - Some use Twitter to draw attention to postings on their blog. (Do this judiciously, however. I don't recommend providing a link to every entry - just one you would like to draw special attention to.)
• Conferences - Set up a Twitter account just for your conference and post updates about activities, speakers, events, etc. (Or set up one for your association and use it for this purpose during the conference. But I have discovered that people are much less scared of technology if they are going to use it on a finite basis...like three days during the conference.)
• Cell phone updates - A post I wrote a while back on the Acronym blog led to some asking me how they could communicate with members on their mobile phones. At the time, it was a pretty expensive undertaking (not amenable to zero-budget association marketing departments). With Twitter, interested members can set their account to receive cell phone updates from your postings. And the beauty of it is that is opt in - members who don't want updates on their cell phone can just view them on the Web.
• Networking - I have met many people on Twitter that I never would have met otherwise. I have learned from people who do what I do every day (generally not for associations) but do it much better than me. I have seen support spring up over night for everything from victims of wildfires in California to those who discovered they had cancer. (See www.frozenpeafund.com for that support in action.) In addition to personal networking, you can help other association members find each other by asking if they have blogs, Facebook accounts, Twitter accounts, etc.

In the meantime, I am trying to keep track of association folks on Twitter. (I found Ben, but if you are on Twitter and would like to be added to my informal TwitteRoll, let me know.)

A New ROI Calculator For Social Network Campaigns

Care2, which describes itself as “the largest online progressive network, bringing together socially and environmentally responsible nonprofits, businesses and its 7 million members,” has created a tool to calculate an estimate of cost and return on investment for the recruitment and fundraising efforts of staff in social networking sites (like Facebook and MySpace).

The first step asks you to determine the metrics by entering goals or results, such as:

• Staff/volunteer hours per week
• Cost per hour of staff and volunteer time
• Social network “friends” recruited per week
• Average direct donation per friend from the social network site
• Net churn rate per year for your email list

Step 2 involves calculating the resulting revenue and costs for each of the metrics; step 3 involves projecting the response rates for email advocacy and outreach to social network recruits over a four-year period by entering data such as the total number of emails opened per mailing. Step 4 projects the results of the effort.

Author Justin Perkins also suggests that, if your results are based strictly on advocacy or branding, you could limit your use of the calculator to “cost per friend” or “cost per email name” to get a comparison of the cost of recruiting people elsewhere.

[ via HC & T Update ]