Are you friends with your hospital on Facebook?
The Journal of General Internal Medicine reported on a study comparing facebook's system of rating one's hospital with the hospital's 30-day readmission rate. The latter is an important test of how good a job the hospital is doing. I suppose the theory is that if they are doing things right, monitoring the patient closely to catch issues before they turn into problems, that patients won't be showing back up in a week or three with post release problems that require re hospitalization.
In reviewing 4800 hospitals they found that in general the higher a hospital's Facebook rating the lower their readmission rates.
I am one if those bad patients who had to be re admitted following reverse total shoulder replacement surgery. After a smooth surgery and quick discharge, I was back a week later with a collapsed lung, a rare side effect of the nerve block administered at the time of surgery. I don't hold the hospital responsible, not even the anesthesiologist who did the block. I feel that I was one of the statistically doomed unfortunate few who experience the problem. I guess that means I won't be un-friending
my hospital.
Will we be sharing vacation photos and craft ideas on our Facebook pages? Probably not. We're not really on a first name basis. But I won't be giving them a black mark if asked to rate them.
The power of social media is growing exponentially. A negative word to my paltry thirty Facebook friends can reach their 900 Facebook friends (30x30=900) only to spread to their 27000 friends (900x30=27000). Wow, even as I write that, it is hard to believe. Did I do the math right? The ability to communicate on such a huge scale carries with it a tremendous responsibility to be factual and fair.
Would I want my hospital to be using their facebook site to report that I had not been the ideal patient? That I complained a lot, wouldn't call for help getting out of the bed, had Dear Husband smuggle in McDonald's? Fortunately research shows that, for now, hospitals are using social media more for communicating with employees. Heaven help us if Facebook starts asking the hospitals to rate we patients on a five star basis.
Would I be a ***** or, horrors, a **?
The Journal of General Internal Medicine reported on a study comparing facebook's system of rating one's hospital with the hospital's 30-day readmission rate. The latter is an important test of how good a job the hospital is doing. I suppose the theory is that if they are doing things right, monitoring the patient closely to catch issues before they turn into problems, that patients won't be showing back up in a week or three with post release problems that require re hospitalization.
In reviewing 4800 hospitals they found that in general the higher a hospital's Facebook rating the lower their readmission rates.
I am one if those bad patients who had to be re admitted following reverse total shoulder replacement surgery. After a smooth surgery and quick discharge, I was back a week later with a collapsed lung, a rare side effect of the nerve block administered at the time of surgery. I don't hold the hospital responsible, not even the anesthesiologist who did the block. I feel that I was one of the statistically doomed unfortunate few who experience the problem. I guess that means I won't be un-friending
my hospital.
Will we be sharing vacation photos and craft ideas on our Facebook pages? Probably not. We're not really on a first name basis. But I won't be giving them a black mark if asked to rate them.
The power of social media is growing exponentially. A negative word to my paltry thirty Facebook friends can reach their 900 Facebook friends (30x30=900) only to spread to their 27000 friends (900x30=27000). Wow, even as I write that, it is hard to believe. Did I do the math right? The ability to communicate on such a huge scale carries with it a tremendous responsibility to be factual and fair.
Would I want my hospital to be using their facebook site to report that I had not been the ideal patient? That I complained a lot, wouldn't call for help getting out of the bed, had Dear Husband smuggle in McDonald's? Fortunately research shows that, for now, hospitals are using social media more for communicating with employees. Heaven help us if Facebook starts asking the hospitals to rate we patients on a five star basis.
Would I be a ***** or, horrors, a **?
No comments:
Post a Comment