Hospitals, Health Systems and Online Communities

You know, people say that the secret to business and weblogging is doing what you know. This is the inspiration for this post. I have a Masters of Health Administration and I was the online community manager for Solucient, LLC for three years, where I supported a community of nearly 5000 hospital workers.

Based on this experience, I see opportunities for health systems (multiple hospitals managed centrally) to use online communities- particularly discussion forums that allow department managers to work together using the health system Intranet. Below you will find links to the major sections below:

  • A Solution to Reinventing the Wheel
  • An Example: Jeff the Radiology Manager
  • What Opportunities do Online Communities offer Health Systems?
  • How to Know if the Time is Right for an Online Community:

    First, a couple of assumptions:

    People that work in hospitals have many things in common. Especially within specific departments like radiology, workers often share the same education and background. Plus, they are working within a highly regulated industry, which can cause business processes and structure to be similar across hospitals.

    Further, these folks are constantly dealing with new technologies, new management directives, less resources and more patients. These pressures combine to put enormous pressure on department managers.

    Often, these department managers feel isolated, with few resources to help them understand and deal with change effectively. They are left to reinvent the wheel as the environment changes before their eyes. Many realize that their peers may be able to help them, but they lack a consistent and standard system for communicating across hospitals.

    A Solution:
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    Online discussion forums that help department managers work together can keep them from reinventing the wheel. Because these workers have so much in common with their peers, department managers can quickly see relevance and value in the ability to easily communicate with department managers in other hospitals. This is particularly true for departments that use personal computers as part of their day-to-day work.

    Discussion forums can serve this need by allowing managers to share information by posting messages on an internal web site. As messages are posted, notifications are sent to the managers, who reply with their input. In doing so, the experience and knowledge of individual managers is shared across the group and archived for future reference. This simple concept can create knowledge sharing communities across hospitals within a health system.

    Unlike the phone or email, discussion forums offer an agreed-upon communication system. Each member knows that the forum’s purpose is collaboration and by participating, they should not feel that they are bothering their peers like they would with an email or call. Where email and phone are usually individually-focused resources, discussion forums provide communication and structure for groups.

    An Example:
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      Jeff is the manager of the Radiology Department at ABC Hospital, which is part of the XYZ Health System. This health system has 6 hospitals across 3 states. Jeff meets with the other Radiology managers in other hospitals twice a year, and has done so for years. He knows the other managers well and there is a sense of collegiality among the managers, but they do not share information on a regular basis.
      The Impetus
      The XYZ Health System has recently purchased new imaging technology called the Z-ray. Each of the 6 hospitals received the Z-ray machine on the same day and each Radiology department is expected to have it implemented in two weeks. Two radiology managers have used the Z-Ray before and volunteered to help the other managers to get up to speed once the Z-ray arrives.
      The Infrastructure
      The XYZ health system has also made significant improvements to their Intranet, which is an internal and secure set of websites that are available to all health system employees. One of the improvements is the creation of discussion forums that are department-specific.
      In these forums, a department manager is able to post a message on a website that also goes to all other department managers in the system via email. As this message is replied-to, the replies are also shared with managers in that particular department- allowing information to be spread across all members. All messages are also organized and archived on the XYZ Intranet. Further, each member has options in how to manage the notifications.
      The Process
      Jeff doesn’t have experience with the Z-ray and feels self-conscious about his lack of knowledge. One day after the Z-Ray arrives, he reads the manual, speaks with company representatives, but feels isolated. Luckily, he’s not alone.
      Using the discussion forums, his peers in other hospitals began to ask questions. What are the first things we should do? What are the pitfalls? How do you configure the Z-ray? Jeff felt that his peers were in the same boat as him- they are under the gun to get it going and feeling isolated.
      The managers with Z-Ray experience began to reply to their peers using the forum. They spoke from experience in the language of a radiology manager. They didn’t know everything, but they served as advisors regarding the Z-ray. All Jeff had to do was check his email to learn about this new technology. He posted a couple of messages, but mostly he watched the ongoing exchanges between his peers over the two-week implementation period.
      Results
      Two weeks later, the Z-ray was up and running in all six hospitals. Jeff didn’t have to drive to a central location to learn, he didn’t have to sit though training to learn. He learned through his peers experiences, he learned through networking, he learned through the community.
      Jeff wasn’t an expert, but he felt he knew as much as his peers- which was much more than he would have learned on his own. While getting more up to speed over the next few months, he knew he could post a message to the forum and get input within 24 hours or so. The managers found that the sum of their knowledge was represented in the discussion archives.
      The online community provided a communication resource, but it also helped Jeff get to know his counterparts on a personal level. He felt that he was a member of a group of people working toward a goal. Over time, he felt increasing trust in his peers and loyalty to the group. Thanks to the technology, Jeff felt part of a supporting community of peers. When they got together for face-to-face meetings he felt even more connected to his peers.

    What Opportunities do Online Communities offer Health Systems?
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    The points below outline the major ways that online communities and discussion forums can impact a health system:

  • Increased departmental knowledge sharing through peer-to-peer discussions
  • Decreased training costs through new and always-on communication channels among employees
  • Decreased travel expenses due to an increase in online meetings and discussion
  • Increased morale and loyalty through increased personal relationships among employees
  • Decreased learning curves for technical implementations through shared and archived discussions
  • Creation of department-specific knowledge-bases through searchable archives of discussions
  • Centralized communication structure through online community platform technology

    How to Know if the Time is Right for an Online Community:
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  • If employees feel isolated and out of the loop, an online community can help them be more engaged and involved with their peers.
  • If employees are looking for alternatives to normal email and phone conversations, an online community can centralize the communication and help a group organize and collaborate more efficiently.
  • If knowledge is centralized in one location in a health system, an online community can offer easy ways to share that knowledge across the system.
  • If management is looking for ways to unite employees and build culture across geography, online communities can be the centerpiece of the communication that starts to build culture.

    Of course, online communities are not a panacea and each system comes with its own set of dependencies. However, overall, I believe that online communities can be a business tool that can impact health system efficiency, staffing and communication.

    If you'd like to discuss these opportunities, or anything related, please contact me using this address or call 206.323.1041.