Hospitals, just like virtually any other organization in the world, are joining the social media bandwagon and starting Twitter, Facebook, and YouTube accounts, in addition to various blogs by administrators and clinicians. A new research concluded that nine in ten hospitals or health systems are currently involved in social media to some degree, but only one in three currently has a formal social media plan in place.

There are 121 hospital YouTube channels, with a total of 4,575 videos. The first Hospital Youtube channel was set up by Arkansas Children’s Hospital in 2006. Avera Health has the largest number of videos (377), while M.D. Anderson Cancer Center has the largest number of subscribers (575).

There are 103 hospitals with Twitter accounts. While the first hospital on Twitter was St. Jude Children’s in 2007, it was Henry Ford Health System that was the first to gain national attention when it performed a surgery and posted corresponding 140-character updates. Not surprisingly, Henry Ford has the largest number of “followers” at 1,489. However, St. Jude has the largest number of Facebook “friends” at 33,252.

Numerous hospital CEOs have been blogging in the last few years. But one of the earliest (and probably most popular) blogs has been that of Paul Levy, President and CEO of Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center in Boston.

Since this is a new trend, it is typically handled by few people within a hospital’s web department as most of them report they have three or fewer people monitoring their social media. It seems that Twitter, YouTube, and Facebook are the most popular platforms and also the most effective in terms of driving traffic to the hospital’s Web site. The study also reports that 92% of all hospitals who are involved in social media did that in order to attract new patients. However, only 12.5% of them have experienced any success in that area. Other reasons for involvement in social media included improving community relations, customer service, employee engagement, and crisis management.

Social media can definitely provide another mechanism for hospitals to interact with patients at a relatively low cost. But the real question remains: how important is it for the patient that his or her hospital is tweeting or has a Facebook account? Obviously, having a social media presence will never replace high quality care and excellent face-to-face customer service. But the new generation of hooked-up patients is demanding that their hospital connect to them using their own language and tools.