March 17th, 2011 by Jeffrey Benabio, M.D. in Opinion
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I recently wrote a paper on social media with some of my colleagues at Kaiser Permanente: Ted Eytan, MD @tedeytan, Rahul Parikh, MD @docrkp, Vince Golla @vincegolla, and Sara Stein, MD @sarasteinmd. In the article, “Social Media and the Health System,” we argue that the benefits of engaging patients and colleagues in social media outweigh potential risks.
The two most common reasons that physicians resist participating on blogs, Twitter and Facebook are: 1. Fear of liability. 2. Lack of compensation for the time invested.
If we would like more physicians to be part of the conversation, then we’ll need to find ways to overcome these barriers.
What has your experience been like interacting with physicians on social media? Is there a place for physicians on sites such as Twitter and Facebook?
For physicians reading this post, you can also join the over 160 others who have commented on this article on Sermo.
*This blog post was originally published at The Dermatology Blog*
February 16th, 2010 by DavidHarlow in Better Health Network, Health Policy, Opinion
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An often overlooked tool in health care providers’ struggle with the malpractice crisis is the medical apology. Two thirds of the states provide some form of protection for the medical apology (i.e., a simple apology is not admissible in court as an admission of culpability), and settlements reached post-apology are almost invariably lower than they would be otherwise. (In the current environment, articles on medical apologies are popping up everywhere … even in the NY Times business section.)
It is important to note that an effective apology policy does not stop with the simple apology — I’m sorry that this happened to you — but must include a commitment to conduct a root cause analysis, to communicate the results to the patient and/or patient’s family, to implement systems improvements based on the results of the root cause analysis, and to offer a specific apology once the analysis is complete, and an offer of monetary compensation if the provider or its systems were at fault. Of course, it’s easier to describe these steps than to actually carry them out. Read more »
*This blog post was originally published at HealthBlawg :: David Harlow's Health Care Law Blog*
