Five years ago, Mayo Clinic created its Center for Social Media to help train staff to use this burgeoning platform for communication and connectivity. Hootsuite and Mayo Clinic’s course seeks to empower healthcare professionals to use available social tools in a productive way.
“We think it’s critical that healthcare employees from all realms of the spectrum understand how to use these tools, especially since it’s where [patients] spend so much time,” said Lee Aase, director of Mayo’s Center for Social Media, in a Hospitals & Health Networks report. “This Hootsuite partnership allows us to bring [those training tools] to a much wider audience.”
Through the partnership, Mayo Clinic and Hootsuite will offer online and in-person educational tools to healthcare professionals globally to communicate strategically with patients on various social platforms, including Twitter, Facebook and LinkedIn, according to H&HN.
According to a Hootsuite statement, more than 40 percent of consumers say information learned on social media affects how they handle their health and 41 percent say social media affects how they select physicians or hospitals, but just 26 percent of hospitals actively use social media.
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