Doctors trust medical research. Patients trust their friends.
As health systems wade deeper into the Web to engage their patients, who can they trust to help spread the word?
A quartet of health systems are experimenting with MedicalMommas, a fledgling social network for health-conscious mothers. The Atlanta-based site – still in beta and launching in September – surrounds online message boards, groups and Facebook-like profiles with medical news and advice from Akron Children’s Hospital, Cleveland Clinic, Emory Healthcare and Children’s Healthcare of Atlanta. Each has signed on as a strategic partner.
Health systems should feel pressed to find these kinds of partnerships, said Diana Keough, a MedicalMommas co-founder. This is the era of the Oprah Effect. Anecdotal and personal experiences carry more weight than ever when reinforced by a chorus of like-minds online.
Health professionals are trying to find the appropriate way to join the choir. “Our parents would never question doctors,” Keough said “We are always questioning the doctor. We’re always looking for a second opinion and someone who had the same experience.”
Health systems have resisted some niche social media because they symply don’t trust them. The Cleveland Clinic’s Eileen Sheil sees these sites and wonders, “Who are they?”
“Are they some crazy working out of a basement?” asked Sheil, the Clinic’s executive director for media and public relations. “If someone calls me from the Wall Street Journal, New York Times or The Plain Dealer, I know who I’m talking to. Social media is a different world, and we’re just starting to experiment with it.”
A Deep-dive Into Specialty Pharma
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Keough and MedicalMommas co-founder Rhonda Rowland solved the credibility gap through longtime professional relationships. Keough is a health journalist from The Plain Dealer in Cleveland, and Rowland covered health for CNN out of Atlanta (reporter’s note: MedicalMommas popped up on my radar because I worked with Keough at The Plain Dealer.)
“They brought some credibility to the table,” Sheil said.
Akron Children’s, the Clinic, Emory and Children’s Healthcare will provide a core of female physicians for video shoots and interviews for MedicalMommas. In addition, they’ll promote the Web site, and the site will do the same for each system. There’s no financial exchange, and the site retains editorial control over its content.
Physicians will discuss topics via the MedicalMommas audience, and the conversations will be filtered by the former journalists who run the site. There’s also a chance participating physicians could become active members of the community, responding on message boards and in groups alongside mothers.
MedicalMommas is built around answering the question: What do mothers wish they would have known? Its audience will participate in raising questions and providing part of the answers. The site is focused less on new parents with toddlers than mothers with children entering their teens.
Keough said the site will tell stories from all angles, even perspectives that doctors could have previously “pooh-poohed away,” but now through the Web, they’ll have to face them.
“You have to tell them as both sides” Keough said.
Many physicians have started blogging, using video servers like YouTube to embed themselves on their Web sites and engaging patients by creating Facebook pages, said Christopher Boyer, online marketing specialist for hospitals at HealthGrades. But “a scenario where they’re responding is really unique.”
Part of the challenge is time, according to Boyer and health-care marketers. Many doctors don’t have the time during the workday to dedicate themselves to social media outlets.
Andrea Joliet, assistant director of interactive marketing and public relations at Akron Children’s Hospital, said she expects the physicians there could — after a few adjustments — talk back and forth with patients.
“We have to update our policy,” Joliet said. “This is all new for us. We’re talking it through and understanding the potential.”
