Using social media for community engagement: A success story

Guest post by Scott Kashman, chief administrative officer of Cape Coral Hospital, part of the Lee Memorial Health System in southwest Florida, and Nancy Travis, the hospital's director of women's services.

Over the past several years, I have been more actively involved in social media. Through my own blog, Facebook, LinkedIn, Twitter and Hospital Impact, I have tried to see what forums were most effective. Each plays to a slightly different audience or provides a different way for me to engage others in communication.

When I started out, Paul Levy and Marty Bonick were two executives who guided my first blog efforts. It allowed me a chance to share some organizational perspectives and get more people in dialogue.

Recently, we started a hospital Facebook page to better engage community members and staff, in accordance with our social media policies. It serves as a way to share upcoming events, solicit feedback and gain real-time perspectives when people "check in" to our facility. In fact, I spoke to one family member who shared some concerns with wait times given our busy seasonal fluctuations. She and I connected and I shared some of our plan to alleviate this. She then turned to me and shared how amazing and caring our emergency department team was during her stay. It's allowed me to learn how we could use social media in a positive, proactive way to shape experiences and understand where we could enhance our processes.

While Paul and Marty helped pave my initial start, it is Nancy Travis, our director of women's services, who shines in the area of engaging people in our community and around the world. She is our social media go-to person, using social media in a way that impacts our decisions and shapes the services we provide.

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