Sebastian Merkel*, Westphalian University of Applied Sciences, Gelsenkirchen, Germany Track: Research Presentation Topic: Communities in health care Presentation Type: Poster presentation Submission Type: Single Presentation Last modified: 2013-09-25

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Background: Previous studies have shown that the use of Facebook is increasing significantly within hospitals due to different reasons: Patients use the social network to communicate and gather information about practitioners and clinics and health organizations use Facebook for marketing purposes and reputation-building. However, little is known about the Facebook use of hospitals and patients in Germany, especially considering the qualitative dimension.
Objective: Following our research question – How do hospitals communicate with their patients on Facebook we had two objectives: (1) Identify to what extent German hospitals use Facebook. (2) Analyze the content of comments and wall posts of hospitals and patients.
Method: At first we identified all hospitals with an official Facebook page using the latest version of the “German Hospital Register” which covers 96.2 percent of all hospitals and 98.7 percent of all bedsides in Germany. We verified the results by contacting the identified organizations via the mail address given on the clinic´s homepage. Afterwards we gathered all relevant data of hospitals with more than 100 friends or followers and 50 wall posts within the time period of one day. To guide our content analysis we developed a coding scheme.
Results: Research in progress.
Conclusion: Research in progress.