Childrens Hospital Boston: Fill & Download for Free

50 years ago, more than half of children born with congenital heart disease died.Today, the overall survival rate is more than 95%.Innovations in cardiac surgery has advanced so fast in such a short period of time that we are often at the edge of what is possible and what is ethical.Here are some interesting tell-tale signs that the field of pediatric cardiology and cardiac surgery is an amazing field of wonder, complexity and humanity:A child born with a hole in his/her heart can undergo open heart surgery to close the defect, recover for a 1/2 day in the cardiac ICU, be eating dinner that same evening, and discharged to home in 3 days.In 2005, a baby born 3 months premature weighing only 700 grams underwent successful open heart surgery by a Stanford surgeon - the smallest and youngest patient ever to successfully undergo cardiac surgery. The surgeon told me the heart was exactly the size of a grape.Every year there are thousands of children with advanced heart failure waiting for a heart transplantation. Resources are limited and the average wait time is 5 to 6 months. Most children simply can't wait that long and many would die on the wait list. There is now the technology to support these failing hearts to bridge them successfully to heart transplantation. These are called ventricular assist devices and are essentially artificial mechanical hearts - there are over 20 types of such devices. Kids can now attend school with these devices humming quietly in the background.In 2001, cardiologists at Children's Hospital Boston opened a baby's compromised valve while still in his mother's womb. That baby is now 10 years old and thriving.Because mortality rates are so low, patients are living longer. Statistically, there are now more adults with congenital heart disease than there are kids with congenital heart disease.Consequently, adults with congenital heart disease who require heart surgery are cared for by pediatric cardiac surgeons and recover in children's hospitals. The oldest patient I have cared for as a pediatric cardiologist was 88 years old!Because of the field's rapid growth, there still is significant variation in the care of the complex patient with congenital heart disease. It is likely that major institutions will differ in their surgical approach. Such contradiction and conflict are a major source of dissatisfaction amongst parents who just want the best for their child.50 years ago, surgeons were practicing on dogs trying to figure out how to bypass the heart in order to operate on it. Now, pediatric cardiac surgery has entered the realm of the routine with fast track protocols and rapid recovery programs. It continues to grow pushing the envelope further. With each innovation there are more failures. With each life saved through discovery, there are countless more that died through trial and error.I believe the physicians and surgeons of years past would consider today's field to be unthinkable, unpredictable, dangerous and awesome. I certainly do.

Peter Waters and Don Bae at Childrens Hospital Boston are the best.

It is not possible to fully answer the question, "what should hospitals do?" without answering the more fundamental marketing questions:Who are the specific hospital's target consumers/customers?What action does the hospital want them take?Once these questions are answered, you can look at the spectrum of social media possibilities with a more focused lens. This allows you to quickly discard social media elements that either i) don't reach the right types of people or ii) don't effectively engender your desired business action. This initial "pruning" of the landscape is immensely helpful.I think there are some constants that apply to almost all hospitals, though. Chief among them is the fact that hospitals really do change peoples' lives. The emotional difference between "I just had a great cup of coffee at the new place on the corner" and "the doctors at Children's Hospital just saved my daughters life" is almost too enormous to express.A hospital is making positive impacts on people's lives every day. Furthermore, the actions of a hospital not only affect the patient, but also the family and friends of that patient. One positive experience can create dozens of "brand evangelists" for that hospital. This is very different from, say, consumer products. I love my iPad, but the sale of that iPad to me earned Apple only one brand evangelist.Following this line of thought, a primary social media element undertaken by any hospital should be to create and sustain platforms where other people can speak positively about the hospital. A Facebook Page is a great example of this type of platform. To get an idea, check out the Facebook Page for Children's Hospital Boston: http://www.facebook.com/ChildrensHospitalBoston?v=wallTheir wall is a paragon of customers-as-evangelists. The hospital itself could probably get by without ever posting another Wall post. Their nearly half a million Fans are taking care of things for them. And, a positive message from a real person is immensely more meaningful than any messaging the hospital could push out.I obviously don't have access to the Page analytics for Children's, but I can count 22 Page interactions in the past 24 hours. Since the average Facebook user has 130 friends, we can estimate that those interactions resulted in news feed exposure of Children's Hospital Boston to 2,860 people. Pretty awesome when you start to multiply those numbers by weeks and months.Please comment if you have any follow questions and I will do my best to respond.