Online reputation management by cancer hospitals: A systematic literature review in the USA and Spain

Abstract

Cancer hospitals manage social media platforms in a professional way to improve their relationships with internal and external stakeholders and reinforce their corporate brand. To do so, they need their health professionals to be involved: these professionals become brand ambassadors able to influence society. Nevertheless, they face different challenges: legal issues, new patients’ demands, privacy-related matters, or the difficulty of disseminating scientific content. This literature review paper analyzes how cancer hospitals manage their social media platforms to improve their reputation. To do this, we carry out a systematic literature review focused on papers published in the USA and Spain, based on the Salsa framework proposed by Grant and Booth (2009). We then define an online corporate communication model allowing cancer hospitals to improve their reputation through Facebook, Twitter, and YouTube (MedPac Model for Building Cancer Hospital Brands). The paper concludes that this model is useful for cancer hospitals because it prioritizes persons (brand ambassadors) rather than companies, focuses on scientific and emotional content rather than business information, and is based on human values.

The Impact of Social Media on Hospitals’ Branding Initiatives

“…Thanks to internal communication, hospitals share information with employees (Rodrigues, Azevedo & Calvo, 2016) and promote corporate values such as their identity or vision (Jahromi et al, 2016). With respect to external communication, hospitals respect patients' rights when communicating with them (Pelitti, 2016) as well as other external stakeholders' rights, such as media companies or public authorities (Medina Aguerrebere, et al, 2020). The hospital's Corporate Communication Department carry out three main external communication activities:…”

“…In hospitals, the Corporate Communication Director's main responsibility consists of promoting the company's brand and reinforcing its strategic positioning in the health industry (Medina Aguerrebere et al, 2020). Brands represent tangible and intangible assets that create an added value to the company, and this value influences stakeholders' perceptions about the organization (Esposito, 2017).…”

“…(McCaughey, Baumgardner, Gaudes, LaRochelle, Wu & Raichura, 2014). Among all of them, cancer hospitals are especially engaged on promoting social media as a corporate communication tool (Medina Aguerrebere et al, 2020). On Facebook, doctors focus their communication with cancer patients on six main topics: Concerning Twitter, many cancer hospitals use this platform for improving patient's care: correct misinformation, redirect patients to accurate sources, provide emotional support and facilitate communication among patients (Sedrak, Cohen, Merchant, Schapira, 2016).…”

“…According to Revuelta (2019), the increasing number of fake news published about health and the difficulty to access quality information make it difficult for patients to deeply analyze health related contents. That is why, becoming a true source of scientific information constitutes a strategic opportunity for hospitals interested in reinforcing their brand (Medina Aguerrebere, et al, 2020).…”

Impacto de la COVID-19 en la comunicación de los hospitales en España. Adaptaciones y evaluación de sus profesionales

“…La investigación sobre la gestión de la comunicación en los hospitales es, por tanto, reciente e incipiente, en paralelo a su paulatino desarrollo (Pelitti, 2016), a pesar de la larga tradición que acompaña a los dos ámbitos confluyentes de los que parte en origen, la Comunicación para la Salud y la Comunicación Corporativa, según se ha teorizado (Costa-Sánchez, 2011). La comunicación interna (hacia sus trabajadores), intermedia (con los usuarios) y externa (con la sociedad y otras organizaciones) conforman sus principales ámbitos de actividad (Medina-Aguerrebere et al, 2020;Costa-Sánchez, 2012).…”