Online reputation management by cancer hospitals: A systematic literature review in the USA and Spain

Abstract

Cancer hospitals manage social media platforms in a professional way to improve their relationships with internal and external stakeholders and reinforce their corporate brand. To do so, they need their health professionals to be involved: these professionals become brand ambassadors able to influence society. Nevertheless, they face different challenges: legal issues, new patients’ demands, privacy-related matters, or the difficulty of disseminating scientific content. This literature review paper analyzes how cancer hospitals manage their social media platforms to improve their reputation. To do this, we carry out a systematic literature review focused on papers published in the USA and Spain, based on the Salsa framework proposed by Grant and Booth (2009). We then define an online corporate communication model allowing cancer hospitals to improve their reputation through Facebook, Twitter, and YouTube (MedPac Model for Building Cancer Hospital Brands). The paper concludes that this model is useful for cancer hospitals because it prioritizes persons (brand ambassadors) rather than companies, focuses on scientific and emotional content rather than business information, and is based on human values.