Barwon Health facing up to social media

Erin Pearson
WHILE most offices across the country are banning social networking sites, Barwon Health is encouraging employees and patients to jump on-line.
Barwon Health launched its Facebook account last week, aiming to help the community stay in touch with its services.
Communications director Kate Nelson said organisations ignored the benefits of utilising social media sites at their “own peril”.
“Bad media reports about social networking sites and a generation gap made convincing the hospital board to take on the idea challenging but we just had to get on board,” she said.
“People want to talk about health and we feel it’s a priority to provide people with an area to talk about it.”
Ms Nelson said she believed Geelong now had Australia’s first public health network on Facebook.
“Ballarat and The Alfred hospitals are on Twitter but we don’t think any others are on Facebook,” she said.
The page would also help Barwon Health communicate with its workforce of 5000.
Barwon Health’s Facebook page, Comms Geelong, has been running as a test since the first week in June. The page has accumulated 42 friends.
Barwon Health launched its Twitter account in January.
“It’s been a change in focus for us,” Ms Nelson said.
“We set up our Twitter page to help update people on what is happening at Barwon Health and it’s been working really well. If we have a major trauma accident, we could use twitter to send updates out.”
However, Ms Nelson said Barwon Health was playing it safe with Facebook.
“If anyone comments when they are upset or if they post anything inappropriate we will remove the comment and post a reason why then either contact them directly or pass them on to our consumer liaison person,” she said.
“Things can go wrong but we just need to learn from them – it’s about being transparent.”