Skip to main content

I work in the healthcare space, so fortunately, we don’t face too many frustrations when it comes to interactions with our brand or products. My focus is mostly on finding meaningful ways to engage appropriately.

One tip that always works for me is to personalize every response as much as possible. For example, instead of a generic “We’re sorry for the inconvenience,” try something like, “Hi kName], thanks for bringing this issue to our attention. I can imagine how frustrating that must be, and I’m here to help!”

I’m curious—does anyone here also work in healthcare? How are you creating meaningful engagements on social? I find it challenging due to HIPAA privacy laws, and often, I can’t interact with the positive feedback we receive because of this.

Same here! I work in MedTech. And customers rarely interact with us on social media anyway.


I’m not in healthcare, but I work for a university connected to a hospital system. I’ve experienced some hurdles with HIPAA too. We had a celebrity with 2M followers get treated at our hospital and post about the great care they received, but we couldn’t react to it until they signed their consent forms. Thankfully, they did, but that was my first time really experiencing a hurdle from HIPAA. On the university side, we don’t have to worry about any of that. Your tip for personalizing messages is a great tip. We use the Sprout asset library to hold our canned responses, but have them set up so that you have to fill in the name when sending a message. 


A wonderful tip is to avoid using the word You, which could imply that the reader was a patient. So, language like, “We’re sorry when anyone visiting our hospital feels they had a negative experience...” or “Our patients can call XXX-XXXX for our billing office. Hours are 8-5 M-F.”


A wonderful tip is to avoid using the word You, which could imply that the reader was a patient. So, language like, “We’re sorry when anyone visiting our hospital feels they had a negative experience...” or “Our patients can call XXX-XXXX for our billing office. Hours are 8-5 M-F.”

@robbie.schneider This is KEY, thanks for the tip. It’s tough to navigate social while keeping privacy in mind so crafting language that is general instead of specific can save you!


I’m not in healthcare, but I work for a university connected to a hospital system. I’ve experienced some hurdles with HIPAA too. We had a celebrity with 2M followers get treated at our hospital and post about the great care they received, but we couldn’t react to it until they signed their consent forms. Thankfully, they did, but that was my first time really experiencing a hurdle from HIPAA. On the university side, we don’t have to worry about any of that. Your tip for personalizing messages is a great tip. We use the Sprout asset library to hold our canned responses, but have them set up so that you have to fill in the name when sending a message. 

@tori.zito That’s awesome you were able to capitalize on the social attention they were giving your brand! Navigating HIPAA can really slow the process down, sometimes to the point of not being able to interact anymore because it isn’t relevant. That can be frustrating but also necessary.


Reply