Q&A: How Hospitals are Failing to Engage Patients on Facebook

From what you saw, do providers need to a better job engaging their patients on Facebook, or are they doing enough as is?

As an industry, we need to do a better job. We have allowed Facebook to be a marketing platform, and that’s not what people want. They don’t want to hear from the marketing director. They want to hear from a doctor, a nurse, an athletic trainer. They want to hear from someone who has relevant knowledge to them in their daily lives. If we use these platforms to provide these tools and resources to our communities, we have a much better chance of creating that level of trust that when they do need something, we’re who they come to at that time. We’re really talking more about patient experience, patient engagement, and less about marketing our services. We have an opportunity with these platforms to do that. We just need to take advantage.