Health Care Social Media ( #hcsm) Wrap Up— and some additional thoughts
The trend is certainly intact… patients, other health care professionals and even hospital adminsitrators were all engaged this past week with the goal of improving their understanding of their condition, their *postion* or *role* in #hcsm and with the goal of helping *their* physicians engage the consumer utilizing Social Media.
Digital Communications: Something that came up during last weekends #hcsm Tweetchat…. Is digital communication part and parcel of Social Media? If a physician engages his patients by allowing email communication, is that considered a form of social media outreach. I think the easy answer is no, but I do not think there is an easy answer to this issue. Social Media outreach— with the purpose of improving the knowledge base, access and health of our patients is a relatively new concept. In that context I believe that digital communications (email) should be considered a final common pathway of sorts…
In my own experience, patients, providers, adminsitrators or interested 3rd parties are engaging me on twitter, FB or through my blog and website… if they desire to *take it to the next level* they email me through FB or my website and now the contact becomes memorialized in Outlook or Xobni. Therefore, until HIPAA compliant mechanisms are in place to enable me to engage patients on FB or twitter, a compliant institutional encrypted server will need to serve that purpose…. so, for the time being I will continue to consider email to be an important component of a successful social media outreach program.
FB/Twitter:
FB: More than 35 patients or potential patients reached out to my personal FB page this week… I’m still trying to get my “professional page” going so *friending* them back will take some time. If I can *borrow* some time from anyone to help complete our professional FB page, I will be eternally grateful.
Twitter: Twitter usefulness continues to evolve and to be honest, continues to amaze me. There are some absolutely brilliant people on there and I am engaging, learning, educating and interacting with them on a daily basis.
EMAIL:
55 emails were received this week…. issues were scattered.
- verifying surgical schedules and pre-op instructions
- verifying pre-office visit information
- questions they *forgot to ask*… patients still tend to be very nervous in a physicians office. Thus the reason for this previous post.
- clarification… pls bring a pad and pen to your visit.
- receipt of scanned medical records from previous providers.
- two testimonials which I’ve yet to add to my site… Yes… the testimonials on my site are REAL and UNSOLICITED
- three requests for interviews for “social media friendly” physicians.
- two pictures and one video of patients sent to me to show how their incisions are healing and how they are progressing with their PT.
- A nice back and forth with a SoMe savvy hospital adminsitrator looking to gain a physicians perspective to guide their efforts at helping physicians in their network initiaite a SoMe *campaign*
Well… I’ll keep it short and sweet. As stated earlier, the trend is intact… Social media and health care— with the purpose of educating, sharing, collaborating, and innovating are inexorably linked, hopefully forever.
great stuff!
