The Colorado Health Foundation Guest Blog

Alexis Anderson has been with The Colorado Health Foundation, a GroundFloor Media client, at its annual Colorado Health Symposium this week.

Check out her second guest blog, "Discovery Session: The spectrum of health care challenges and the media assigned to tell its stories," to read insights from some of Colorado's most respected health care reporters regarding the challenges they face covering the broadcast spectrum of health care.

The Colorado Health Symposium

Alexis Anderson is in Keystone working with our client, The Colorado Health Foundation at its annual Colorado Health Symposium. Check out her guest blog "Discovery Session: Motivate People to Take Action and Inspire Behavioral Changes" about the daily challenges of health care social marketers.

~ Kristina

Social Media While Under the Knife?

Where do you draw the line with social media? No Twitter or Facebook after work? No LinkedIn while still in bed in the morning?

I recently found my “line” while getting married and going on our honeymoon. Aside from a few Facebook and Twitter updates during the wedding weekend and honeymoon, I left my phone in the hotel and tried as hard as possible to focus on everything and everyone around us. It was a break from my online world that was very much needed, yet extremely difficult. Many times I found myself digging for my iPhone in my purse to check Twitter only to laugh at myself because I had just left it in the room minutes earlier.

What about social media while under the knife? As long as my hospital gown covered all the important places, I would not balk at doctors sharing educational information that could help medical students and future patients. And I’m not alone. One patient in Ohio apparently felt the same way while preparing to have a new kind of knee surgery.

“Live tweeting during surgery: lessons from a successful debut,” offers an interesting overview of this next phase of social media for the health care industry. Doctors, via three hospital communications employees, relayed tweets as the procedure progressed. UStream was also used to offer followers a live feed of the surgery.

There are certainly a lot of privacy and legal issues to research and follow but by tapping into the hospital’s legal counsel early, the staff was able to plan for emergency scenarios – including stopping the UStream feed if needed – and have the contingency plans pre-approved by hospital counsel.

In the end, Ohio State University Medical Center weighed the pros and cons of this very public approach and recognized the tremendous opportunity that existed for bringing new research, technologies, the doctors’ expertise and a first-person patient account to life in a new way. The organization is certainly not the first in the health care industry to think outside the box when it comes to using social media—in February my colleague Kimmie Greene blogged about work The Fearey Group in Seattle was doing for Swedish Medical Center using Twitter.

Do you think live-streaming content will become mainstream among health care providers? Would you be willing to have your surgical procedure chronicled and broadcast across the Web while under the knife?

~Alexis

National Women's Health Week

With this past Sunday celebrating Mother’s Day, it is fitting that May 8 – 14, 2011, is National Women’s Health Week. I know from firsthand experience that between juggling kids, home responsibilities and work, my personal needs are often last on the list. And this includes looking after my own health.

National Women's Health Week is being coordinated by the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services' Office on Women's Health in conjunction with Anthem Blue Cross and Blue Shield. The hope is that National Women's Health Week will bring together communities, businesses, government, health organizations, and other groups to promote women's health.

Women have different health needs during various stages in their lives, but we all may face health concerns such as heart disease, cancer, diabetes, weight management and stress. Yes, stress…and lots of it.

To borrow and adapt a phrase from one of my favorite Madonna songs (Express Yourself), “So come on girls, do you believe in your health? Now we’ve got something to say about it!” Let’s empower women to make their health a top priority this week. It may be time to schedule an annual physical, refine your weekly workout routine or start one, or get to bed early/find time for a nap. Okay, maybe a nap is not realistic, but getting to bed by 10 p.m. could happen with just a little planning.

Here’s what you can do to spread the word:

• Tweet and post on Facebook about the National Women’s Health Week, what you are doing for your own health or how you are encouraging friends to focus on their health: http://1.usa.gov/yOFew

• Use/follow the hashtags: #NWHW and #WomensHealth

Check out the following resources and share with your co-workers:

• A week-long email series covering important women's health issues; and a template to drop in the information and use as flyers.

• A poster promoting important health steps every woman should take as well as providing resources for more information.

Here’s to your health this week and for a lifetime,
~ Amy

Connected Thinking, Globally.

GroundFloor Media (GFM) is one of more than 40 public relations agencies worldwide that are part of the invitation-only Public Relations Global Network (PRGN). Comprised of agency owners and industry veterans, PRGN agencies are selected for being one of the premier agencies in their market and therefore providing the background and intelligence for clients looking to create traction in a particular region or industry.

From Denver across the United States and beyond to its newest members in India and Russia, the benefits of PRGN membership are extensive, including learning from each others’ experiences and providing clients with exclusive access to a wealth of resources, specialized capabilities and local connections. Many of GFM’s national clients have harnessed the power of our PRGN colleagues to quickly reach additional markets across the globe with a consistent approach and messaging.

But enough about “why” PRGN is valuable, it’s much more fun to know about “what” our partners have been up to lately.

On Jan. 26, PRGN distributed the first edition of its newsletter with a focus on providing mini case studies from member agencies. Natalie Price of Seattle public relations agency, The Fearey Group, wrote about a topic that’s near and dear to our hearts here at GFM – social media for the health care industry. The Fearey Group recently worked with Swedish Medical Center, the largest nonprofit health system in the Puget Sound region, to create two new innovative social media campaigns.

• The first effort helped to raise awareness for sleep disorders. Swedish’s Sleep Medicine Center hosted the first-ever “sleep up” – an all-night live stream following a patient undergoing sleep disorder testing. The campaign reached more than five million people and gained national media coverage, including online bellwether Mashable.com.
• The second program caught more than media attention. Did you see Grey’s Anatomy last week? Yes, surgeons really do live tweet from the operating room and Seattle’s Swedish Medical center was one of the first in the country to do so. The live-tweeted surgery reached more than 83,000 people on Twitter.
  

The success of these campaigns offers valuable insights for all PRGN partners and our clients. We look forward to bringing this information to you in regular posts about PRGN on our blog.

Click here to subscribe to the PRGN newsletter or stay up-to-date on the latest news and information from across the network at Facebook, Twitter and YouTube.

Always Continue to Learn…

I recently attended the Mayo Clinic and Ragan Communications’ second annual Health Care Public Relations, Marketing and Internal Communications Social Media Summit in Jacksonville, Fla., and it got me thinking about the value of professional development. It’s so easy to get so wrapped up in our day-to-day work and our hectic schedules – and often, taking time out for professional development falls to the bottom of our priority list. It sounds like a lovely idea, but who has the time???

My experience at the Mayo/Ragan conference reminded me of the importance of stepping back and taking the time… the time to learn from renowned leaders in the field, the time to share ideas with industry colleagues, and the time to get re-energized about the work we’re doing.

For me, the conference was extremely valuable in that it served to validate that, as an agency, GroundFloor Media has stayed on the proverbial leading-edge when it comes to counseling our health care clients about social media. At the same time, I learned a variety of new tips, tricks and tools from both the speakers and my fellow attendees as we discussed approaches we’ve taken, issues we’ve faced, etc. And, indeed, I returned to Denver energized and excited to share this expanded knowledge with my co-workers and apply it to strategies for clients.

I am grateful that GroundFloor Media places such an importance on professional development – whether it’s membership in a professional organization or participation in a webinar, a local industry group luncheon, or a multi-day workshop in another city. We are encouraged to identify opportunities that will help us strengthen our expertise – and then to take the time to participate in them and share what we learned during a subsequent internal staff lunch & learn.

In addition to the conference I recently attended, one of my colleagues is currently at a conference focused on internal communications. Three of us will be attending a monthly breakfast for health care communicators next week, and yet another is planning to attend a travel-focused social media conference early in 2011. Many of us are also active members of professional organizations including the Colorado chapter of PRSA, Colorado Healthcare Communicators and the Public Relations Global Network (PRGN). All of these activities are invaluable when it comes to ensuring that we continue to stay abreast of the latest trends and developments in the PR/marketing communications industry.

~ Amanda Brannum