CASE STUDY: SPECTRUM HEALTH SYSTEM
CaseStudy:
Spectrum
HealthSystem
How a healthcare organization scales social
media across 23,000 employees while successfully
navigating HIPAA regulations
Discover how Spectrum Health System integrates Nexgate and Brandwatch
with Hootsuite Enterprise to maintain compliance on social media
A not-for-profit health system, Spectrum Health System is West Michigan’s
largest employer with nearly 23,000 employees across 12 hospitals.
Spectrum Health is responsible for providing credible health care
information and discussions among their online communities. Taking this
commitment to social media, the organization builds trusting relationships
and promotes wellness in their communities.
What they did
Navigating HIPAA regulations to be a trusted source
of information
Public-serving institutions such as hospitals need to be a part of relevant
conversations and be available on whatever channels patients want to
connect. “People are increasingly turning to social media, but there’s a lot
of misinformation out there,” says Michael Yoder, Spectrum Health’s Social
Media Consultant. “Health care systems must provide trusted information
on immunization, flu virus, therapy, ebola, you name it—there needs to be
a voice of reason.”
12
Hospitals with social
media presence
23,000
Hospital employees
24 hr
State-mandated social media
response time met

CASE STUDY: SPECTRUM HEALTH SYSTEM
But like in any highly regulated industry, health care organizations
are more cautious to adopt new technologies because of rules
and regulations like HIPAA. Challenged to effectively serve their
community—by answering inquiries quickly, sharing information, and
making connections—in a compliant way, Spectrum Health found a
solution in the Hootsuite Enterprise ecosystem.
How they did it
Customizing the Hootsuite ecosystem to work for
them
By partnering with the best applications, integrations, tools, and
resources available, the Hootsuite ecosystem gives global organizations
the power of choice, depth of integration, and expertise to scale. This
thriving ecosystem is made up of over 100 app integrations, technology
partners, agencies, and solution partners.
Understanding Spectrum Health’s digital
organizational structure
Michael Yoder and Kristin Coppens, Social Media Specialist at
Spectrum Health, work together as a center of excellence, overseeing
all communications for a dozen social media contributors across the
hospital network. Working with Hootsuite’s Professional Services, their
dashboards are set up to mirror a hub and spoke business model,
with them at the centre. This lets them monitor all contributor-
conversations, assign messages, pull reports, and approve or
decline scheduled messages.
Instead of relying on one single vendor to support the organization and
entrust security measures, Spectrum Health uses Hootsuite’s ecosystem
to handpick the best applications, integrations, and tools for them.
“As an established
health care
organization, we
have a responsibility
to be part of the
general health
conversation,
providing credible
information.”
Michael Yoder, Social Media Consultant,
Spectrum Health

CASE STUDY: SPECTRUM HEALTH SYSTEM
Using Brandwatch and Hootsuite to provide
excellent social customer service
For example, Spectrum Health is required to respond to all direct
inquiries within 24 hours. But because the dozen contributors
across the various hospitals aren’t dedicated to managing social media,
Michael and Kristin monitor for communications through Hootsuite
and Brandwatch. Setting up listening streams and notifications via
Brandwatch, they are notified as soon as an inquiry comes in and
assigns it to the correct contributor—for example, the Children’s
Hospital answers most pediatrics-related questions.
Reporting on success and measuring response
times with Hootsuite Analytics
Michael generates Hootsuite Analytics reports to track social media
use, community growth and engagement, and customer service
response times, such as number of assignments and time to resolve.
Navigating HIPAA regulations by adding Nexgate
to their ecosystem
One of the deciding factors in using Hootsuite is the ability to add
Nexgate Social Patrol to secure and ensure social media compliance,
especially when sharing any patient-related content. By integrating
Nexgate across all social channels, they’re alerted of any unauthorized
profile changes (e.g. image changes) or inclusions of patient contact
information, so they can immediately lock down the channel or
adjust for compliance. If a patient wants to further discuss their
personal health, they can easily take conversations offline.
“Before, it was a manual process to look through all messages and flag
for patient contact details, but today, with Nexgate, we can set it up
to operate automatically in the background so that we don’t have to
worry,” shares Kristin.
“Hootsuite is great for
us. Just this morning
I was looking at
direct messages and
comments, making
assignments that
notify coordinators
at different hospitals.
Hootsuite empowers
our team to be
autonomous and
take ownership—
without the risk.”
Michael Yoder, Social Media Consultant,
Spectrum Health

CASE STUDY: SPECTRUM HEALTH SYSTEM
The impact
With an organization of 23,000 employees and only two people
corporately responsible for the whole system, having centralized
control is essential. Now with Hootsuite, all of their social
administrators are on one dashboard, giving Yoder the ability to
track, analyze, and report on the platform unlike ever before.
‹‹ Responds to inquiries within required 24 hours
‹‹ Remains compliant with HIPAA regulations
‹‹ Engages in social conversations to dispel health rumors and share
trusted knowledge
‹‹ Integrates Nexgate HIPAA compliance and security monitoring
across every social channel for 12 hospitals
Today, monitoring for compliance can be automated through
Hootsuite and partner integrations. This frees up Michael and Kristin
to improve strategies, support contributors, and build communities by
sourcing and sharing relevant, trustworthy content. They were able to
achieve all of this because of Hootsuite’s open ecosystem.
For example, Kristin recently hosted a “Sun Safety” Twitter chat,
where she used Hootsuite’s Content Library to pull all questions,
answers, and fast facts to sort and publish in the chat. By monitoring
the #SunSafety hashtag in-stream, she sourced new questions and
comments, fueling the conversation. Keeping everything consistent
means that she can do more campaigns like this to engage and
educate followers.
“Before Hootsuite
and even social
media, we connected
with our patient
community by phone
and email. Now, we
monitor all related
conversations
from just about
anywhere and
respond accordingly.
Social media is a
great opportunity to
be more aware, to
be more engaged,
and provide a better
experience.”
Michael Yoder, Social Media Consultant,
Spectrum Health