Report: Social media presents opportunity for health-care groups

About one-third of consumers use social media for health discussions, according to a report released in April by the PricewaterhouseCoopers LLP (PwC) Health Industries Group.

Those discussions range from using online forums, Facebook, and Twitter to track and share symptoms to using websites to share opinions on doctors and drugs. For instance, 42 percent of consumers have used social media to check reviews of treatments and physicians, according to the report.

Consumers’ use of social media gives health-care entities like insurers, hospitals, medical manufacturers, and private-physician practices a chance to meet the needs of their customers, according to Karla Anderson, a partner in PwC’s pharmaceuticals and life sciences practice and one of the report’s authors.

“Whether you choose to be an active participant or not, people are talking about their experiences and sharing information,” Anderson says. “Recognizing [social media] as a viable and growing channel is, I think, what organizations really need to focus on.”

The PwC report, released April 17 and titled “Social media ‘likes’ healthcare: From marketing to social business,” includes a national survey of 1,060 U.S. adults. PwC, which operates in 158 countries and provides quality assurance, tax, and advisory services, also surveyed 124 members of the eHealth Initiative, a national association of health-information and technology industry executives.

In addition, the report includes data from interviews with 30 health-care industry executives. Authors also tracked social-media activity from hospitals, drug manufacturers, and online patient communities for a weeklong snapshot.

“It’s interesting when you start to monitor social-media sites,” Anderson says. “You start to see a consensus among consumers and people that are patients or caregivers or people that may have questions about health care.”

Social-media patterns can show what users do not understand about health care, according to Anderson. They can also reveal consumers’ biases and shed light on treatments that aren’t well known.

So a health-care company that is paying attention to social-media patterns would know which consumer concerns need to be addressed, Anderson says. For their part, consumers are already using social media to view health-related information.

The report found that 32 percent of consumers look at their family’s or friends’ health-care experiences on social media. Plus, 29 percent use the medium to learn about other patients’ experiences with diseases, and 24 percent view health-related videos or images posted by patients.

Surveyed consumers indicated they are likely to trust information from certain medical sources on social media — 61 percent of consumers said they would trust information shared by doctors, and 55 percent said they would trust information from hospitals. Just 42 percent responded that they are likely to trust information from health insurers, and 37 percent said they are likely to trust information from drug companies. 

Health-care companies display varying levels of activity on social media. The report found that 41 percent of doctors and 39 percent of hospitals are likely to share information via the medium. Only 34 percent of health insurers and 28 percent of drug companies are likely to share information on social-media channels.

Interviews show that companies’ participation is likely to grow in the future, Anderson says.

“Even the pharmaceutical manufacturers said, ‘This is too big of an opportunity for us to pass up,’ ” she says. “ ‘Our customers want to talk to us in this way, so we’ve got to find a way that is comfortable for our legal and regulatory teams as well as our external customers.’ ”

Consumers indicated they would like to use social media for help with making doctor’s appointments. Nearly three quarters of survey respondents, 72 percent, said social-media services to help them know when appointments are available would be valuable. According to the survey 71 percent said appointment reminders would be helpful, and 70 percent said social-media referrals to specialists would be valuable.

Speed is important when it comes to interacting with consumers over social media. Among survey respondents, 76 percent said a health-care company should respond within 24 hours when contacted through social media for an appointment request. Almost half, 49 percent, said companies should respond within a few hours, and 29 percent said companies should respond within one hour.

The report found similar expectations for other types of social-media interaction, with 70 percent of respondents believing they should receive a response to a social-media request for information within a day. And 42 percent of respondents expect responses to information requests within a few hours, while 23 percent want responses within an hour.

“You have to allocate the right resources based on the volume in order to be responsive,” Anderson says. “You have to have the same kind of customer exchange you’d have if you have a 24/7 call center.”