Bay Medical Group

Bay Medical Group is one of over 700 GP practices in NHS England using the Social Media Managed Service provided by Redmoor Health. The Social Media Managed Service provides GP practices and Primary Care Networks with high-quality patient social media communications, without the burden and pressures associated with managing social media channels.

The Social Media Managed Service includes:

• Creating or developing social media pages across Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, Tik-Tok and Snapchat
• Creating bespoke public health campaigns (national, regional and local)
• Regular GP practice staff social media training
• Regular posting at least three times a week
• Patient comment management
• Promoting national campaigns from Public Health England
• Creation of closed Facebook groups for patients with long-term conditions or Patient Partnership Groups

One of the biggest challenges facing GP practices when it comes to communicating healthcare messages to their patients is lack of time. With high demand for healthcare services GPs can sometimes find there is less time to engage with each patient individually. Moreover, the sheer volume of health-related information available online can be overwhelming and confusing for patients, and GP practices may find it difficult to ensure that the right message is being conveyed accurately. With these obstacles in mind, GP practices must come up with creative and innovative ways to communicate healthcare messages to patients in order to ensure that they are receiving the best possible care.

This is where the Social Media Managed Service comes in, it provides practices with the capacity to deliver public health communications through an experienced pair of design and communications hands.

Social media provides practices with the opportunity to reach and engage with patients in their own homes. Some estimates assume that c.84% of the UK population use social media, meaning platforms like Facebook, Twitter and Instagram are prime spaces for public health communications.

A skilled communication team can help to create eye-catching visuals that draw the attention of patient audiences and ensure that more complex health-related messages are understandable and accessible to general audiences.

Redmoor Health has been supporting Bay Medical Group with its Facebook and Twitter presence since 2018. In order to capture a glimpse of Bay Medical Group’s social media growth journey we will explore the outputs and outcomes delivered over the December 2022 period and compare them with a benchmark taken earlier in October 2022.

Over the December period, 49 posts were launched on Facebook, and 36 tweets were sent on Twitter. In addition to this Bay Medical Group used Instagram to publish a further 31 posts over the December period.

Topics published on Bay Medical Group’s social media accounts included:

• The Bay Medical Group patient Christmas bulletin
• Recruitment posts for open positions at the practice
• Digital service awareness (NHS app, online prescription ordering)
• Mental health outreach and service signposting
• Winter vaccine awareness and signposting
• Winter wellness outreach
• Community groups and engagement
• Alcohol awareness
• Childcare support and child safety awareness
• Service availability

In addition to Bay Medical Group’s regular social media posting schedule, a festive community engagement effort was delivered, in the form of an “Elf on the shelf” social media campaign.

The “Elf on the shelf” theme was a topical way of engaging patients, particularly families with young children, with important messages about available community support.

These posts performed very well with Bay Medical Group’s patient audience. Below you can see some performance metrics for these posts:

Now that we have established the October performance benchmark and looked at the social media outputs delivered over the December period, including the “Elf on the shelf” campaign, we can have a look at the December outcomes to see if an improvement has been made.

We can see from these social media metrics that all statistics have increased across the board for both Facebook and Twitter. In addition to the metrics collected for Facebook and Twitter we have been able to gather metrics from Bay Medical Group’s Instagram account performance:

We can see when comparing the December period to the October period that Bay Medical Group has experienced significant growth over this period:

From these results, we can say, with a high degree of confidence, that Bay Medical Group has experienced social media growth success in the December period. If we look at some of the differences in outputs delivered between the October period versus the December period we can start to see some key learnings.

Content is king

Bay Medical Group has invested significant time into developing content, like the “Elf on the shelf” campaign, which is fun and relatable to their target audience. Content like this is well engaged with and as a consequence performs better in social media algorithms increasing its reach.

Develop your audience

Despite the strong effort put in by Bay Medical Group and the great returns for December, their success has not occurred overnight. Bay Medical Group have had a well-developed and disciplined social media presence for quite some time. Practices looking to replicate successful social media presences like Bay Medical Group should remember that audiences are developed over long periods through good content and regular posting.

Have posting discipline

In addition to quality content, Bay Medical Group was able to maintain a stream of more than daily content for its social media accounts. Having frequent content ensures that as well as being seen the practice also remains high in the conscience of their patient audience which can help to remind people to engage with the practice.

When discussing the impact of social media it can be difficult to know what effect GP practices using social media has on a patient population.

Shares

Many of Bay Medical Group’s health outreach messages are well-shared, sometimes reaching hundreds of shares of a single post. This is a strong indication that many patients are eager to find learn about important medical information from a trusted source. GP practice social media is a great way of tackling health misinformation at a local level.

Comments

Patient comments are also an important way of gauging how social media affects patients. Comments give us a window into the thoughts and feelings of a patient population. Let’s look at some of the comments on Bay Medical Groups December post.

In response to a post about using the NHS app for repeat prescriptions, one patient commented:

In response to a post about Crohn’s disease and Colitis awareness, a patient commented:

Another post, advising about the symptoms of Step A received this comment:

Here we can see some real-world examples of individual patients who have found benefit from their GP practice social media presence. Many more patients in other areas could stand to benefit from their GP practices’ social media presence in a similar way.

Positive Feedback

We don’t usually associate social media as a repository for positive feedback, but the reality is it’s a quick and easy way for patients to leave a nice message about an experience with the practice team. Let’s take a look at some of Bay Medical Group’s feedback:

With negative portrayals of primary care in the media, it can be motivating and supporting to General Practice staff to receive feedback such as the above.

In conclusion whilst it is difficult to assess the overall effect GP practice social media has on a patient population, anecdotal evidence makes it clear that for some patients, social media can be of considerable benefit either due to increase awareness of services, exposure to reliable medical information or better integration with local communities. It can also be argued that social media is a valid feedback loop for GP practices.