When used correctly, Twitter can be a powerful tool for hospitals who are trying to engage web-savvy patients and establish themselves as the "go-to healthcare resource" in their market -- and the secret's out. With over 600 U.S. hospitals actively using Twitter (and growing), it's more important than ever that your hospital is making the most of its social media tools.

Twitter isn't about mindlessly publishing information about your hospital, it's about providing your followers with information that can help them achieve their health goals -- which in turn will build trust in your hospital's brand. If your hospital currently offers health classes, events, or webinars, you've already done the hard part by creating valuable content that covers a wide range of health topics. All you need to do now is start tweeting.

You've created a series of health and wellness programs designed to teach your patients how to stay healthy. Your wellness events cover a broad range of topics, everything from heart health seminars to parenting classes to medication adherence. You've even implemented an easy to use registration process that utilizes your health call center, website registrations, and mobile application. In short, you've become a master at teaching patients about their health and recruiting them to register for your health classes, events, and webinars.

Does your hospital outsource its physician referral or class registration services to a call center partner? There are a lot of great reasons to outsource this function, but in an age where web-based service is the norm, and consumers expect everyone they speak with to have information at their fingertips, it is essential for a call center partner to support full data integration.

At the center of your hospital’s class and event registration strategy lies your website – your patient's best resource for information on upcoming events and how to participate. When someone visits your website, they expect to be able to find the information they need as quickly as possible. Anything less and you run the risk of losing potential participants, and future patients, to competing hospitals.