Ted Eytan, MD MS MPH

This month’s Man of the Month is Dr. Ted Eytan, who interviews Holly Potter, Kaiser Permanente’s VP for Public Relations, on the use of social media in health care below.

Ted Eytan currently works as a Medical Director for Delivery Systems Operations Improvement for The Permanente Federation, LLC. His experience is in working with large medical groups, patients, and technologists to bring health care consumers useful information and decision-making health tools, to ensure that patients have an active role in their own health care.

He attended medical school at the University of Arizona. He received his master’s of public health degree from the University of California, Berkeley, and his master’s of science, health services degree from the University of Washington. He completed his residency training at Group Health and his fellowship training in the Robert Wood Johnson Clinical Scholars Program at the University of Washington.

In my Man of the Month-ness (or as I’d like to say, my Honorary Woman-ness), I’d like to highlight the contribution of a leader in health care, in this case, Holly Potter, who is the vice president of Public Relations for Kaiser Permanente.

I met Holly several years ago through her work on KP HealthConnect, Kaiser Permanente’s national electronic health record and personal health record. More recently, Holly’s been a mentor to myself and others in understanding the use of social media in health care. One of the most important things she’s done as a leader is to start with the idea that there is a use for social media in health care, and it’s made a difference for many at Kaiser Permanente and beyond.

Read on, and thanks, Disruptive Women in Health Care, for the opportunity to bring these stories forward!

Holly Potter, vice president for Public Relations for Kaiser Permanente (on the right), with Anna-Lisa Silvestre, vice president for Online Services (on the left), at the United States Senate, April, 2008

Ted: “Holly, tell me about when you began your career with Kaiser Permanente. How did you choose KP and what was your first position?”

Holly: “After spending six years running HTPotter Communications, a small firm specializing in nonprofit and public health communications, I joined KP in late 2004. I was initially attracted to KP because I had a been a long-time, satisfied member. In addition, the launch of the Thrive advertising campaign just the year before, signalled to me that it could be an exciting place to do the kind of work I love. I was right.

I feel very fortunate that my first role at Kaiser Permanente was as the communications lead for the implementation of KP HealthConnect, our electronic health record system. In that role, I worked directly with the IT, clinical and operational leads to support end-user adoption and promote the rollout internally. I joined just as our eighth region was completing their first installation of KP HealthConnect and was with the project team up through the completion of our outpatient and online implementations.”

Ted: “What about the area you are leading now, Public Relations, National Media and Stakeholder Management, what was it like when you started? How did it interact with the local and national community compared to now?”

Holly: “People are often surprised to learn that public relations is a relatively new department at KP. We’ve only been around for two years and during that time, our team has been able to build what I believe is a world-class operation. Our initial focus was to build our reputation via traditional media outreach. At the end of 2008, we had increased our positive media mentions 191% over 2007 (246% over the 2006 baseline, before the department was created). With the traditional media relations work in place, we are now turning our attention to other PR avenues, including third-party stakeholder engagement, strategic partnerships, event sponsorships, speaker placements, and of course, new and social media engagement. I think in 2009 we will make strides in each of those areas, but the team as a whole is most excited about diving into the social media world.”

Ted: “New media and social media engagement seems to be a sticking point for many health care organizations. I remember when I first started working with you that you said something along the lines of ‘we don’t have time to deliberate about this anymore.’ What was that conversation like to have in your role, and what is it like today?”

Holly: “Many people continue to believe that new/social media are “less relevant” than traditional media. I think we learned the hard way that the two are not mutually exclusive. Before becoming active in the Web 2.0 space, we watched as an inaccurate story about Kaiser Permanente spread through the blogosphere and ultimately land on the front pages of the Los Angeles Times and Wall Street Journal. We accept the fact that there will be conversations about Kaiser Permanente in the new media world. The decision we had to make is whether those conversations would happen with or without our voice. We feel like we need to engage because we have valuable knowledge and perspectives to share.

The challenge we face today is how to focus our energies. How do we balance the time we spend in social media conversations with the rest of our workloads? I don’t think we’ve found the right answer yet, but we are enjoying experimenting.”

Ted:“The decision you are talking about, to change the way a multi-billion dollar non-profit health system interacts with the outside world, seems like a pretty big one to be a part of.

This blog’s readers may be involved in decisions that are potentially this disruptive, or even more disruptive, in their careers.

Ted: “What are some things a person should do or be aware of in a situation like this?”

Holly:“Partners are invaluable to the success of this kind of disruption, especially in health care. Build alliances with key stakeholders who will benefit from whatever you are proposing. Gain buy-in from diverse constituencies and different layers of management. To do these things you must be able to clearly articulate you goals and objectives, and perhaps more importantly, demonstrate that you understand both the risks and benefits of the activity you hope to pursue. If you cannot clearly articulate those things to all the people who have a stake in the outcome of your recommendation, you may alienate critical partners and doom yourself to failure.”

Links: Kaiser Permanente: What Should Health Care Look Like in the Future?

Holly Potter’s Bio:

Holly Potter is vice president of Public Relations for Kaiser Permanente. She oversees efforts to promote the company’s story and achievements through both traditional and social media. In addition, her team is responsible for broad public relations, partnerships and stakeholder management programs that help to build Kaiser Permanente’s reputation among opinion leaders and partners in the health, business, philanthropic, and advocacy communities.

An experienced health communications strategist, she has held a variety of leadership positions directing a broad range of communications and advocacy campaigns. She brought to Kaiser Permanente a proven 15-year track record of award-winning public relations programs that influence stakeholders and shift public opinion. In her career, she has advised and partnered with senior executives in the nonprofit, government and corporate sectors to advance policy and promote brand identity.

Prior to joining Kaiser Permanente, she ran HTPotter Communications, LLC which served a variety of nonprofit and government clients in California and Washington, D.C. Her former clients include National Campaign Against Youth Violence, California State PTA, Public Health Institute, Drug Policy Alliance, San Francisco Wellness Initiative, Santa Clara County Public Health Department and the White House Council on Youth Violence.

This entry was posted on Monday, March 2nd, 2009 at 11:22 am and is filed under Guest Posts, HIT/Health Gaming, Man of the Month, Social Media. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.