7 ways to create a dynamite health care newsroom | Public Relation

When Charles Krauthammer was paralyzed from the neck down in a diving
accident in 1972, it seemed the first-year Harvard medical school student
would never achieve his ambition to become a doctor.

Yet he managed to graduate with his class, earn his medical degree and
eventually become a Pulitzer Prize-winning columnist.

Before his death in June,
he wrote to Shepherd Center, an Atlanta rehabilitation hospital for patients with brain and spinal
injuries, to express his gratitude for treatment he had received there.

The hospital pushed out the story in its newsroom, offering Krauthammer’s
grit and determination as a story of hope, says Jane Sanders, director of
public relations and digital marketing.

Shepherd Center is one of many health care organizations demonstrating the
power of a new style of external communication that relies on storytelling
rather than cranking out stuffy press releases. (The hospital’s newsroom is
hosted by PressPage.)

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Here are lessons from successful newsrooms at Shepherd Center, Children’s Mercy Kansas City
and other hospitals.

1. Don’t just pump out press releases. Tell stories.

Storytelling should be woven into every press release and marketing
message, says Jake Jacobson, director of public relations at Children’s
Mercy. It can replace or augment the traditional news release, because one
can slip strategic messaging into an engaging narrative.

Stories are “more likely to be shared and retold than just spamming out
press releases,” Jacobson says. “You’re more likely to remember it and
retell it as a consumer and an audience member if you hear it as a story
than if you hear it as an announcement or a press release or a tag line.”

Example? Children’s Mercy sponsors Sporting Kansas City, a major league
soccer team. Many people thought the whole point was to get the hospital’s
name on the side of the stadium, Jacobson says. Yet the partnership brought
additional opportunities to tell stories creatively.

The hospital has a “remote experience robot” consisting of an iPad on a
pole with a pair of self-balancing wheels. Patients can control
REX the robot
as it scoots along the sidelines, allowing kids in hospital beds to watch
the action and even interview players.

“We tell people the story of our kids getting to experience a sporting
match up close and personal … as if they were there and walking around the
stadium, because they’re controlling this robot,” Jacobson says.

The story was unusual enough for
ESPN to cover it. What sealed the pitch, Jacobson adds, was that Children’s Mercy created a
video about REX.

2. Tap your employees.

Many hospitals offer accounts of their caregivers to humanize their staff
in the public eye. OhioHealth tells the story of a young
critical care fellow. Cook Children’s Health Care System in Fort Worth, Texas, relates what
inspires its physicians.

“If you walk into a room and see a 6-month-old child, and it doesn’t make
you beam, you shouldn’t go into pediatrics,” one physician says.

At Shepherd Center, patients tend to stay for weeks or months, so they form
close bonds with their doctors and nurses, Sanders says. The hospital often

discussed a popular doctor, Wesley Chay,
and the rewards of his work, as well as the challenges he faces.

Shepherd Center promoted the story on
Facebook, where it drew engagement from patients and fans. People wrote comments
such as, “Love Dr. Chay and the team, good peeps!!” and “Awesome Doctors!”

The hospital also provided coverage when the road in front of the Shepherd
Center was
renamed for its founder, allowing the organization to retell its story.

To find stories, put out the word among your staff. Encourage employees and
physicians to pitch stories to your newsroom team.

3. Cover medical advances using everyday language.

It is important to inform the public about developments in medicine and
technology. What you don’t want, however, is technical jargon.

Shepherd Center describes complicated conditions using laymen’s language in
a story on treating patients with
low-level consciousness due to brain injury, Sanders says.

At Children’s Mercy, physicians and nurses discuss treatment every day with
worried children and parents. They have learned to use straightforward
terms, Jacobson says.

“They’re so used to making this relatable to patients and families that
when we work with them … they phrase it in a way that makes it relatable as
opposed to medical gobbledygook,” Jacobson says.

4. Tell ‘stories of hope.’

One Shepherd Center story told how a paraplegic student walked through
graduation with the help of a
robotic exoskeleton.

“This was a goal of his,” the patient’s mother was quoted as saying. “He
didn’t care how he did it. One way or another, he was going to walk across
that stage.”

Stories such as Krauthammer’s can offer hope to patients wondering how they
will cope with a spinal injury. Shepherd Center promotes these stories
through LinkedIn, Facebook, and Twitter directly from PressPage.

The hospital can track social engagement through Hootsuite, and PressPage
provides metrics. Boosting traffic through Facebook paid promotions is
cheap, costing $25 to $50, Sanders says. The promoted Krauthammer story
drew 20,000 impressions on Facebook, she says.

“If something’s getting good engagement, we might still boost it to drive
even more engagement,” she says.

5. Use your patients as resources.

Shepherd Center often produces stories on topics such as how a person in a
wheelchair can perform a task in the community, Sanders says. One story
featured
beaches that are wheelchair accessible.

“They learn a lot from each other, because there’s no set way to do one
thing, but they can provide insight to their peers,” Sanders says.

6. Know your audiences.

As a referral-based children’s hospital, Children’s Mercy medical staff
aren’t primary care physicians. To spread the word about the healing it
does, it must address two audiences:

• Referring physicians
• Patients’ families, or its consumer audience

Don’t use the same content for such different audiences and social media
platforms, Jacobson says. Facebook tends to be the best way to approach
Children’s Mercy’s families. To reach physician peers and staff at other
medical institutions, LinkedIn works best.

Either way, take an extra minute or two to recast your post for the
intended audience.

“By tweaking it ever so slightly,” Jacobson says, “you let them know we are
actually talking to you, and not just spamming you with the same message
that was sent out to everybody.”

7. Newsjack wisely.

Children’s Mercy is always listening on social media and following the
news, but its communicators are judicious about jumping in with a post or a
story for the newsroom.

This year’s flu season was particularly severe, Jacobson says. Because the
hospital has national experts on the topic, it weighed in.

“If we see something that is in the news and we think our audience can
benefit from our perspective on it, then we will say something,” Jacobson
says. “But we also shy away from jumping on a topic just because it’s
trending.”

Effective

Healthcare Public Relations


goes beyond the standard press release model and tells your
organization’s story through your patients, doctors and staff.
PressPage provides the tools to make this easy. PressPage is an

online newsroom

software provider specializing in the creation of advanced social
newsrooms, virtual press centers and online media hubs which enable
brands to publish and distribute rich content, and provides direct
insights into the results.

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