Summer 2014 - The Twittersphere of SoCal HealthCare Providers

The Twittersphere of SoCal HealthCare Providers: Let us see who has a handle on Twitter

 

by Nishant Jain
*This article conveys opinions of the author, and does not reflect perspectives of the author’s employer or other affiliates.

In order to begin tracking health care social media in SoCal, we looked at the Healthcare Social Media List1 and identified SoCal healthcare providers listed on this site that used twitter accounts. Following is a Mini-Directory with twitter handles for the SoCal region. (Figure 1)

Figure 1: Mini-Twitter Directory for SoCal Providers (based on those registered or claimed at HCSML1)
Organization Twitter ID City/State
Children's Hosp LA @ChildrensLA City: Los Angeles State: CA
Scripps Health @scrippshealth City: San Diego State: CA
Children's Hospital of Orange County @chocchildrens City: Orange State: CA
Sharp HealthCare @sharphealthcare City: San Diego State: CA
University of California, San Diego Health System @ucsdhealth City: San Diego State: CA
Rady Children's Hospital @radychildrens City: San Diego State: CA
Huntington Memorial Hospital @huntingtonnews City: Pasadena State: CA
USC University Hospital, Los Angeles @USCHealthNews City: Los Angeles State: CA
St Joseph Health System @stjoehealth City: Orange State: CA
VA Sandiego Medical Center @vasandiego City: san Diego State: CA
Palomar Medical Center @PPHcares City: Escondido State: CA
Hoag @hoaghealth City: Newport Beach State: CA
Miller Children's Hospital @millerchildrens City: Long Beach State: CA
Riverside County Regional Medical Center @RCRMC City: Moreno Valley State: CA
Pacific Hospital of Long Beach @PacificHospital City: Long Beach State: CA
UCLA Health System @UCLAHealth City: Los Angeles State: CA
UCLA Jonsson Comprehensive Cancer Center @UCLAJCCC City: Los Angeles State: CA
Cedars-Sinai @CedarsSinai City: Los Angeles State: CA
(List might be incomplete. We will keep updating it. If we missed you , please contact us and let us know)

Salient Points
Who tweets the most (Table 3): Sharp Healthcare and Children’s Hospital LA lead the list for the most number of tweets, followed by UCSD Health System and Huntington Memorial Hospital.
Who has the most number of followers (Table 4): Children’s Hospital LA and Scripps Health are among the leaders in the list for the most number of followers, followed by UCLA Health System, Children’s Hospital of Orange County (CHOC) & Sharp Healthcare. The question is how many patients are following their healthcare providers?
Who is the oldest on Twitter (Table 1): It looks like Scripps Health was among the earliest adopters of Twitter as a social media in the SoCal region.
Followers to friend ratio (FF): This ratio represents a measure of how many people followed you versus how many people you follow. A ratio of one or more can be a good indicator that you are listening and being listened to. It could also indicate that you are popular and “Tweeple” (twitter people2) want to hear what you have to say. A ratio of 1 and above is considered a healthy one. All SoCal organizations in the list above had a healthy ratio of close to 1.0 or above. Some had much better ratios, close to 50. This could also indicate very active and aggressive social media marketing campaigns.
Tweets “Favorited”: If users like a tweet, they can click on ‘Favorite’ to bookmark it for quick future reference. So, the number of favorite tweets can indicate active participation by an organization and which in turn can get them noticed (Table 5). Favorite tweets included tweets with regards to inspirational stories related to patients, staff champions, donations, future and upcoming programs and as well as retweets from national health news channel organizations, disease management etc.

 twitter table

 

twitter table5
References:
Healthcare Social Media list http://network.socialmedia.mayoclinic.org/hcsml-grid/
Why Twitter inspires so many new words? http://newsfeed.time.com/2013/07/24/we-the-tweeple-why-twitter-inspires-so-many-new-words/
Twitter. http://www.twitter.com
How Healthcare organizations are using Social Media 2013 Fall Newsletter

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