REFLECTION AND IMPACT OF HEALTH SERVICES ACCREDITATION ON DIGITAL COMMUNICATION AND SOCIAL MEDIA TOOLS

 

Faten Öztürk, İbrahim Halil Kayral, Didem İncegil, Figen Çizmeci Şenel

Introduction

 

Healthcare organizations promote themselves through a variety of digital methods. Individuals make their choices by examining health centers through digital and social communication tools, and the international economic contribution of health tourism is important. Institutions such as TÜSKA, JCI and TEMOS aim to determine quality standards and continuously improve them. The main purpose of this research is to compare whether hospitals with TÜSKA, JCI and TEMOS accreditation certificates effectively use social media and websites, which are digital communication tools, and to compare the usage status of digital communication tools of hospitals that do not have accreditation certificates. Additionally, the implication of the study is to evaluate the impact of digital communication tools on the quality of healthcare services.

 

 

Methods

12 hospitals providing health tourism services in Türkiye were examined using qualitative research method and content analysis method. 2 hospitals from each accredited institution and 6 non-accredited hospitals were included in the study. The research examined TUSKA, JCI and TEMOS accreditation of hospitals and examined social media and websites, which are digital communication tools. Websites have been influenced by technical factors, hospital information, admission and healthcare services, interactive online services and external activities. Social media analysis was carried out under the headings "Liked Messages", "Commented Messages" and "Shared or Retweet Messages". The data was obtained through websites and social media posts covering the period January 2022 - December 2022.

 

Results

The official website, Facebook, X (Twitter) and Instagram accounts of 6 hospitals that have TUSKA, JCI and TEMOS accreditation certification and provide health tourism services were examined and the results are shown in Table 1. The official website, Facebook, X (Twitter) and Instagram accounts of 6 hospitals that do not have a health services accreditation certificate were examined and the results are shown in Table 1.

As can be seen from the findings of hospitals with TÜSKA, JCI and TEMOS Accreditation certificates, these hospitals emphasize the importance of quality on their websites. When hospitals with an accreditation certificate are compared with hospitals without an accredited certificate, it becomes clear that the importance of accreditation in digital communication is critical.

As a result of the total comparison of the social media of accredited hospitals and non-accredited hospitals; We see 89,576 differences in the number of Facebook likes, 1925 differences in the number of comments, 6,705 differences in the number of comments, 847,116 differences in the number of Instagram likes, 6,706 differences in the number of comments, 5,778 differences in the number of Twitter likes, 2,260 differences in the number of comments, and 552 differences in the number of retweets. These differences are in favor of accredited hospitals (Table 1).

When the social media platforms (Facebook, Instagram and Twitter) of accredited and non-accredited hospitals were examined, a significant difference was observed between them. This shows that accreditation is effective in digital communication.

Conclusion:

In comparing the digital communication assets of JCI, TÜSKA and TEMOS, a significant difference was observed in their websites according to accreditation status. In addition, a significant difference was observed in social media usage. The importance of health tourists to reliability also reveals the importance of accreditations. Hospitals regularly update their websites, highlight their accreditation documents and play an active role on social media, which not only attracts the attention of patients but also increases their overall reliability, allowing them to be preferred.