How Does This Best Practice Hospital Grade Out??

Children's Hospital Foundation in Washington D.C. (http://www.childrensnational.org/give) is a best practice hospital in their utilization of social media tools. They are the top U.S. hospital on Twitter with 2,906 followers (@childrenshealth). On their facebook page, they have 1,666 fans. Certainly with these numbers of fans and followers they certainly have a solid "social capital" base of fans, followers, and friends.

Their website is excellent - with ways to financially support their mission, learn about events, and a great section dedicated to meeting children that they have cared for!

As the utilization of social media tools continue to evolve - I believe that the 2.0 version of social media will turn towards quantifying and measuring the "social capital" and "social effectiveness" of organizations and businesses that have adopted these tools. The hospital CFO mind in me wants to see a report/score card format for hospitals using social media tools.

It is very important for us to engage our communities by having tons of followers, friends, and fans. But as we move towards to social media 2.0, how are we capitalizing on our new online engaged communities? Are the friends, fans, and followers that we have really quality, local customers/patients? Are our social media efforts and initiatives translating into a stronger market share, more surgeries, outpatient revenue, and ultimately bottomline impact?

I am starting to work on a social media scorecard that will measure and track hospital and health system social media grades/scores. I believe that this scorecard will be very important for our business and we progress into a social media 2.0 world.

Children's Hospital Foundation's website has earned a grade of 76 out of 100 (according to http://www.websitegrader.com/) - Here is a copy of their report - http://www.grader.com/site.php?URL=www.dcchildrensfoundation.com/site/PageServer

As you will see - there are very specific areas that they can improve on with their website to maximize their excellent efforts in this area.

Their twitter efforts certainly show with a grade of 98.4 out of 100 - here is a copy of their report - http://twitter.grader.com/childrenshealth - their follower/following history is excellent with a great growth of both on this chart http://twitter.grader.com/history/childrenshealth.

As mentioned above Children's Hospital has 1,666 fans on their facebook page - http://www.facebook.com/childrens.national - they do a great job in presenting a "presurgical tour" online, interviews of their medical staff that appeared on CNN and even a visit by President Obama!

Great job - Children's Hospital Foundation for a solid scorecard and great use of social media tools!!