Hospital’s CEO Blog
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 Loading ... Posted by: Exclusive Concepts Blog Team: Thursday, September 29th, 2005 |  

Toby Bloomberg at Diva Marketing has a great profile up on one of the first blogs written by a hospital.

Well, it’s written by Nicholas Jacobs, President and CEO of Windber Medical Center & Windber Institute. Called Nick’s blog and featured prominently on Windber’s home page, Nick is using the blog to communicate to multiple audiences: employees, patients, the public and his board. Toby says it’s a great example of a CEO blog done right.

He’s used it for crisis communications halting circulating rumors of layoffs.

He used it for Keeping it Real
Upon my return to the Medical Center, I found layer upon layer of stories reminiscent of the decade of the 70’s when I taught junior high…. We had physicians fighting over turf issues relating to decisions that had been made freely by them a year ago, but, now, the war is on. We had employees fighting over positions. We had managers upset over decisions being made to improve the progress of the efforts of both the Institute and the Medical Center that inconvenience them…. We had people fighting over space, over time and over interpretations and nuances.

Is blogging worth it? Nick says,
Sure, it’s worth it. It’s worth it every time an employee thanks us for the update or a perfect stranger says, “Yeah, I read that in your blog.” It’s getting the word out in ways that would never have been possible even five years ago.

His take on blogs.
Having started my professional life as an educator, the one thing that has made hospital administration difficult is not having a daily shot at the people you care about most away from home, the people who can impact your life the most deeply, and the people who are making your personal future possible. The Blog has returned a small sense of connectedness to my life. I write, they comment, we connect. That is what it is all about.