A comparison of health communication effectiveness and the improvement of management strategies: taking two Chinese traditional medicine hospitals’ WeChat public accounts as examples

BACKGROUND: In the light of “Internet plus”, hospitals are following the trend of using mobile internet and adopting a strategy of spreading public health knowledge through mobile terminals. WeChat is a social media with the largest number of users in China. Its public account has become the most popular service among the public. METHODS: We examine the health communication of medical institutions on social media platforms. The WeChat public accounts of Zhejiang Provincial Chinese Traditional Medicine Hospital and Jiangxi Provincial Chinese Traditional Medicine Hospital were taken as cases to measure the communication effect from the following dimensions: update interval, content positioning and design, numbers of clicks and likes as well as topic types. RESULTS: The update interval of WeChat public account of Jiangxi Provincial Hospital of Traditional Chinese Medicine was regular, compared with that of the other hospital. The accounts of the two hospitals both set up special sections to facilitate patients to obtain medical services online. There is an extremely significant difference between the two hospitals’ mean numbers of clicks (p < 0. 001), compared with no significant difference between their mean numbers of likes. One-way analysis of variance suggests the type of topic on posts is significantly correlated with the number of clicks. Moreover, there is an extremely significant difference between public health knowledge and news propaganda. CONCLUSION: The development of hospitals’ WeChat public accounts can promote people’s health and equity in accessing medical information and service, and also boost “Internet plus health care” service. The topic type of hospital’s news publicity is paid a relatively lower attention by users. Therefore, hospitals’ WeChat public accounts need to adjust their strategy from propaganda-oriented to users-centered, with topic planning and posts designed to fulfill users’ needs.