Abstract:

The paper seeks to answer the question of the degree to which hospital management uses social media to communicate with stakeholders. The work looked into websites and social media activity of 288 hospitals in Poland during the COVID-19 pandemic from 15.01.2021 to 22.02.2021 using web scraping. The data were analysed with unidimensional and two-dimensional statistical analyses. The author investigated the correlation between the Google rating of each hospital, the number of personnel, level of hospital care, and their activity in social media.

The research demonstrated that quality parameters of Polish hospitals' websites measured with Google PageSpeed Insights vary significantly and are not related to the hospital's size as the number of employees or its type (hospital care level). Similarly, no correlation was demonstrated between the mean Google rating concerning the service quality in a hospital and its size. The activity in social media depends on the commitment of social media teams in each health service institution. The paper offers several positive examples of social media use (Facebook posts) by hospitals during the COVID-19 pandemic. About 38% of the hospitals had Facebook pages. The mean activity on hospitals' Facebook pages in the last three months was 0.45 posts per day. The research concludes that the number of hospitals exhibiting greater social media activity is increasing. The process started in 2011 and continues today. Hospitals' social media activity can be expected to rise further regardless of the size and care level of the institutions. The paper presents original and relevant research. It can help both theoreticians and practitioners of healthcare management and social media public relations.