Use of Social Media Across US Hospitals: Descriptive Analysis of Adoption and Utilization

Griffis, Heather; Kilaru, Austin S.; Werner, Rachel M.; Asch, David A.; Hershey, John C.; Hill, Shawndra; Ha, Yoonhee P.; Sellers, Allison M.; Mahoney, Kevin J.; Merchant, Raina M.

doi:10.2196/jmir.3758

Cited by 166 publications

(56 citation statements)

References 15 publications

(18 reference statements)

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“…The two-sided t student test with a CI of 95% showed that Facebook friends, Twitter followers, and tweets and YouTube video replays reveal a statistically significant different behavior between private and public hospitals ( P <.001), whereas YouTube videos and subscribers showed a different, nonsignificant behavior. These findings confirm the results of Griffis and colleagues [ 26 ]. In the second stage, instead of transforming data, we used a nonparametric distribution to approximate the probability density function and a two-sided Wilcoxon test with a CI of 95%.…”

Section: Discussionsupporting

confidence: 93%

“…Kurtosis values (>3) confirm the leptokurtic distribution of all the variables. A similar study in the United States also reported skewed distribution of social media metrics [ 26 ]. In this case, statistical analysis was conducted by approximating the skewed distribution to a normal distribution with a lognormal transformation.…”

Section: Resultsmentioning

confidence: 84%

“…Statistical analysis of the variables of private and public hospitals observed in the study, including Facebook friends, Twitter followers, number of tweets and YouTube videos, subscribers, and replays was performed in two stages. In the first stage, due to the leptokurtic distribution of all the variables ( Table 1 ), a lognormal transformation to approximate a normal distribution was made, following the approach used by other authors [ 26 ]. The two-sided t student test with a CI of 95% showed that Facebook friends, Twitter followers, and tweets and YouTube video replays reveal a statistically significant different behavior between private and public hospitals ( P <.001), whereas YouTube videos and subscribers showed a different, nonsignificant behavior.…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…The study assessed 3 factors: presence, usage, and impact, similar to previous studies [ 23 , 26 ]. The percentage of hospitals having Facebook, Twitter, and YouTube profiles was used to indicate the presence of hospitals on social media.…”

Section: Methodsmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…Goodness of fit to a normal distribution was evaluated by two techniques. First, according to [ 26 ], a lognormal transformation was used to approximate the skewed distribution of the variables to a normal distribution; a nonparametric distribution was used to obtain the raw probability density function. Both approximations were compared with raw data to assess reliability.…”

Section: Methodsmentioning

confidence: 99%

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Evaluating the Social Media Performance of Hospitals in Spain: A Longitudinal and Comparative Study

et al. 2017

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BackgroundSocial media is changing the way in which citizens and health professionals communicate. Previous studies have assessed the use of Health 2.0 by hospitals, showing clear evidence of growth in recent years. In order to understand if this happens in Spain, it is necessary to assess the performance of health care institutions on the Internet social media using quantitative indicators.ObjectivesThe study aimed to analyze how hospitals in Spain perform on the Internet and social media networks by determining quantitative indicators in 3 different dimensions: presence, use, and impact and assess these indicators on the 3 most commonly used social media - Facebook, Twitter, YouTube. Further, we aimed to find out if there was a difference between private and public hospitals in their use of the aforementioned social networks.MethodsThe evolution of presence, use, and impact metrics is studied over the period 2011- 2015. The population studied accounts for all the hospitals listed in the National Hospitals Catalog (NHC). The percentage of hospitals having Facebook, Twitter, and YouTube profiles has been used to show the presence and evolution of hospitals on social media during this time. Usage was assessed by analyzing the content published on each social network. Impact evaluation was measured by analyzing the trend of subscribers for each social network. Statistical analysis was performed using a lognormal transformation and also using a nonparametric distribution, with the aim of comparing t student and Wilcoxon independence tests for the observed variables.ResultsFrom the 787 hospitals identified, 69.9% (550/787) had an institutional webpage and 34.2% (269/787) had at least one profile in one of the social networks (Facebook, Twitter, and YouTube) in December 2015. Hospitals’ Internet presence has increased by more than 450.0% (787/172) and social media presence has increased ten times since 2011. Twitter is the preferred social network for public hospitals, whereas private hospitals showed better performance on Facebook and YouTube. The two-sided Wilcoxon test and t student test at a CI of 95% show that the use of Twitter distribution is higher (P<.001) for private and public hospitals in Spain, whereas other variables show a nonsignificant different distribution.ConclusionsThe Internet presence of Spanish hospitals is high; however, their presence on the 3 main social networks is still not as high compared to that of hospitals in the United States and Western Europe. Public hospitals are found to be more active on Twitter, whereas private hospitals show better performance on Facebook and YouTube. This study suggests that hospitals, both public and private, should devote more effort to and be more aware of social media, with a clear strategy as to how they can foment new relationships with patients and citizens.

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Section: Discussionsupporting

confidence: 93%

Section: Resultsmentioning

confidence: 84%

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Section: Methodsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Section: Methodsmentioning

confidence: 99%

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Evaluating the Social Media Performance of Hospitals in Spain: A Longitudinal and Comparative Study

et al. 2017

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A 10-Year Social Media Analysis Exploring Hospital Online Support of Black Lives Matter and the Black Community

et al. 2021

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IMPORTANCETensions around COVID-19 and systemic racism have raised the question: are hospitals advocating for equity for their Black patients? It is imperative for hospitals to be supportive of the Black community and acknowledge themselves as safe spaces, run by clinicians and staff who care about social justice issues that impact the health of the Black community; without the expression of support, Black patients may perceive hospitals as uncaring and unsafe, potentially delaying or avoiding treatment, which can result in serious complications and death for those with COVID-19. OBJECTIVE To explore how hospitals showed public-facing support for the Black community as measured through tweets about social equity or the Black Lives Matter (BLM) movement. DESIGN, SETTING, AND PARTICIPANTS Using a retrospective longitudinal cohort study design, tweets from the top 100 ranked hospitals were collected, starting with the most recent over a

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Modeling the online health information seeking process: Information channel selection among university students

Sbaffi

Zhao

2019

Asso for Info Science & Tech

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This study investigates the influence of individual and information characteristics on university students' information channel selection (that is, search engines, social question & answer sites, online health websites, and social networking sites) of online health information (OHI) for three different types of search tasks (factual, exploratory, and personal experience). Quantitative data were collected via an online questionnaire distributed to students on various postgraduate programs at a large UK university. In total, 291 responses were processed for descriptive statistics, Principal Component Analysis, and Poisson regression. Search engines are the most frequently used among the four channels of information discussed in this study. Credibility, ease of use, style, usefulness, and recommendation are the key factors influencing users' judgments of information characteristics (explaining over 62% of the variance). Poisson regression indicated that individuals' channel experience, age, student status, health status, and triangulation (comparing sources) as well as style, credibility, usefulness, and recommendation are substantive predictors for channel selection of OHI.

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Use of Social Media Across US Hospitals: Descriptive Analysis of Adoption and Utilization

Cited by 166 publications

References 15 publications

Evaluating the Social Media Performance of Hospitals in Spain: A Longitudinal and Comparative Study

Evaluating the Social Media Performance of Hospitals in Spain: A Longitudinal and Comparative Study

A 10-Year Social Media Analysis Exploring Hospital Online Support of Black Lives Matter and the Black Community

Modeling the online health information seeking process: Information channel selection among university students

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