I’m listening to Booz Allen Hamilton consultants Grant McLaughlin and Walton Smith discuss social media case studies. One fascinating example is called Health.mil, a one-stop social media portal where military health care groups, including Tricare, drive into it. America’s Military Health System is a unique partnership of medical educators, medical researchers, and health care providers and their support personnel worldwide. The Military Health System is prepared to respond anytime, anywhere to military operations, natural disasters and humanitarian crises around the globe to ensure delivery of health care to all Department of Defense service members, retirees, and their families.
The Government is using the Health.mil portal to better understand their customers. For example, by reading through blogs, leadership learned that constituents were unhappy with the level of benefits distributed to different types of rape victims through Tricare. Different services were provided victims depending on the location of the rape: on or off base. Upon learning about the issue, Tricare leadership acted quickly. They revised the benefit policies and were able to continue provide top-notch health care to all types of rape victims.
I’ve noticed MHS really upping their engagement through social media. Their main portal at (http://www.health.mil/Pages/Page.aspx?ID=41) has lots of ways to connect, and earlier this year they held a video contest through http://www.TroopTube.tv, the DoD’s inhouse answer to youtube. Getting to the interactive and responsive pieces doesn’t feel intuitive to me yet. I couldn’t find the portal link on their home page and had to search for it. But I’m impressed with the steps they’re taking.