Hospitals' new specialist: Social media manager

As Facebook, Twitter and other technologies become more pervasive, more hospitals are hiring staff members dedicated solely to social media -- and getting physicians to use these tools.

By BOB COOK, amednews staff. Posted Nov. 8, 2010.

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Dana Lewis, the interactive marketing specialist for Seattle's Swedish Medical Center, trains physicians in all aspects of social media.[Photo by Rick Dahms /www.rickdahms.com]

For otolaryngologist Douglas Backous, MD, Twitter and blogging were "like speaking a foreign language." So he went to his hospital and got himself a translator: Dana Lewis, hired by Seattle's Swedish Medical Center to handle all things social media.

Lewis is part of a trend in a new and growing type of hospital employment: the social media manager.

Technically, she's called the interactive marketing specialist. But she, and others like her, are being charged by their hospitals to handle such duties as overseeing their social media presence, communicating with patients through social media -- and, in many cases, teaching affiliated or employed physicians how to use social media. The idea is that by having a person dedicated to social media, the hospital can use the technology to strengthen its connections with all of what organizations like to call their stakeholders, which include the physicians who refer patients through their doors.