Adding Social Media to Your Medical Practice

By Jay Krishnan, DO, MBA

Jay Krishnan, DO, MBA

In a relatively brief time, social media and social networking have become ubiquitous in public life. Whether the platform is Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, Snapchat, LINE or any of a seemingly endless array of new entries, social media allows individuals and groups to communicate, share ideas, discuss and debate topics, promote causes and market services.

Physicians are employing social media in various ways to communicate professionally with their colleagues and connect with patients worldwide. Using these tools, physicians are able to enhance professional networking and education, improve patient care, increase patient education and become more involved in public health programs.

Examples of how physicians are using social media in their practice include:

• Physician-to-physician networking

Platforms such as Sermo and Doximity are specifically designed for physician networking. These sites use HIPAA-compliant methods to connect physicians, allowing for communication, medical education, blogging, medical crowdsourcing on complex cases, and even a method for referring patients to specialists.

Physician groups are proliferating on Facebook and blogs written by physicians are becoming prevalent on the web for professional education and research. This type of networking goes beyond the traditional methods of picking up a medical journal or attending a medical conference, allowing for an immediate, customized and interactive experience.

• Physician-to-patient networking/direct marketing

Through social media channels, doctors now have the ability to connect directly with patients on a professional level outside the office/hospital setting.

On Twitter, for example, physicians can disseminate tidbits of medical information or links to important health news, allowing patients to follow their doctors and retweet or like these posts.

Facebook enables doctors/clinics to set up professional pages, which patients can friend to read articles or information posted by their doctor. Essentially, these are avenues for healthcare professionals to directly market their services to the community. Physicians must gently remind patients that information shared is not to be substituted for expert clinical advice.

My experience with social media

My first entry into social media was via Twitter. The platform is easy to navigate and tweeting can be mastered within minutes. Twitter allows you to follow colleagues as well as patients. Patients can follow you too and there is minimal intrusion into your personal life. Time invested in tweeting is minor compared with other social media platforms.

From Twitter, I graduated to a professional Facebook page highlighting specific aspects of my practice, including innovative medical advancements that I am learning about and implementing into my clinical and surgical care. I started encouraging patients to check in on my page and read the practice updates I share. I began to link up with primary care physicians in my area and encouraged them to like my page, so that they had access to my social media feed around the clock.

I have now added Doximity and P2POpen to my social media channels as methods of connecting with referring physicians. Both these sites allow consultations and referrals to be requested electronically, and medical records can be sent in a secure, HIPAA-compliant fashion. In the private-practice setting, when electronic medical records are not integrated, it is extremely helpful to have patient records prior to an appointment.

Although time-consuming, social media participation can be rewarding to a medical practice. Patients are excited to be connected with me as their physician on a level separate from their 15-minute office visit. There is also an aspect of free social marketing that occurs every time someone clicks or likes one of my social media posts.

My next social media adventure will be Facebook’s newly introduced “live” feature that allows you to post a video feed on your page. Video clips can be recorded and posted for your patients to review. I plan to discuss short topics related to prostate, bladder and kidney health. Other physicians have posted video clips live during surgical procedures.

So when you are ready to dive into social media, tweet me at @AskDoctorJay.

Dr. Krishnan is an associate staff member of Cleveland Clinic Glickman Urological & Kidney Institute’s Department of Urology and practices at Cleveland Clinic Urology, Las Vegas.