May 16th, 2011 by Michael Sevilla, M.D. in Opinion
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I wasn’t able to attend the Annual Leadership Forum (ALF) and the National Conference of Special Constituencies (NCSC) meetings in person this year. This is an annual meeting in Kansas City put on by the American Academy of Family Physicians (AAFP). I know that it can be hard to believe that someone actually likes going to a meeting. However, for me, these meetings always re-energize me and connect me with people with a passion for Family Medicine.
In 2010, there were only a few of us utilizing social media tools like twitter and facebook (including my blog posts from Thursday & Friday). However, just a year later, there seems to have been an explosion of people utilizing these platforms to a point yesterday when I saw a bunch of people signing up for the first time during the meeting. Even members of the AAFP Board of Directors were creating twitter accounts yesterday. Wow!
I really believe that this year, 2011, is when the Family Medicine community will more fully embrace social media, not only as a means of socialization, but also as a means of advocacy for our specialty. Here are some other reasons why I believe that Family Medicine needs social media: Read more »
*This blog post was originally published at Family Medicine Rocks Blog - Mike Sevilla, MD*
May 13th, 2011 by Glenn Laffel, M.D., Ph.D. in Health Policy, Health Tips
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Like everybody else, physicians are expanding their online personal identities. At the same time, they are trying to comply with codes of conduct that help consumers trust them and their profession.
There’s no problem so long as the personal online activities of physicians don’t jeopardize their obligations as professionals, which means that there is a problem, unfortunately.
In a recent study for example, 17% of all blogs authored by health professionals were found to include personally identifiable information about patients. Scores of physicians have been reprimanded for posting similar information on Twitter and Facebook, posting lewd pictures of themselves online, tweeting about late night escapades which ended hours before they performed surgery, and other unsavory behaviors.
As I mentioned Monday, medical students and younger physicians who grew up with the Internet have to be particularly careful, since they had established personal online identities before accepting the professional responsibilities that came with their medical degree. Read more »
*This blog post was originally published at Pizaazz*
May 6th, 2011 by Peggy Polaneczky, M.D. in Opinion
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A Rhode Island emergency room doc has been fired for posting about a trauma patient on her facebook page. While the post did not reveal patient name or personal identifiers, it had enough clinical info that a third party was able to recognize the patient.
I say if you’re going to write online about a patient, you had better disguise them so well they don’t even recognize themselves, and never post anywhere near the time of the event’s occurrence. Some bloggers I know change age, sex and other details, and post events long after they’ve happened, so no one one could ever know for sure who they’re talking about. Some doc bloggers go so far as to disguise themselves – preferring to remain anonymous both to protect themselves and their patients.
Some medical blogsites are rich with teaching cases, including x-rays and clinical information that, if disguised, would alter the diagnostic possibilities. As online venues begin to replace the time honored medical journal or local grand rounds, how do we keep our ability to teach one another with clinical cases and still respect patient privacy? In the past, the limited circulation of medical journals kept these cases amongst the medical community, but now with the internet (and the lay public’s interest in medicine), the audience for such case histories is limitless. Read more »
*This blog post was originally published at The Blog That Ate Manhattan*
May 5th, 2011 by FredericLlordachsMD in Health Policy, Opinion
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The Spanish Twitter chapter of #hcsmeu (hashtag #hcsmeuES) held its first unconference on April 1st in Barcelona. For many it sounds like a convention of freakish fans of some cult science-fiction TV show (a group I’m also part of, by the way). But its actually a group of about 200 healthcare professionals from all over Spain who share their interest in social networks and their influence in this particular industry.
Many of those present were meeting face to face for the first time but all of them had previously been gathering weekly on Twitter for a one-hour discussion about the relationship between physicians, pharma, patients and ICT, just as other groups across Europe.
Nowadays even the most reactionary guy admits that both new technological advances and social networking are changing our world, and healthcare won’t be an exception. But these people saw it coming, they are ahead of their time.
In 2010, top searches in Google –in Spain– were for terms Facebook, YouTube, Tuenti(*) and Twitter, all social networks. An average Internet user typically spends 22% of his online time in social networks. Advertising expenditure declines on every media except the Web, where it keeps growing month after month. In fact, big brands have already detected a switch from direct influence –they get less visits to their websites– to mentions in social media: 63% of Spain’s Twitter users do use it to recommend products. 61% express their opinion about products and services. 84% don’t mind getting messages from brands, and many say that companies that make use of social media are outdoing their competition’s revenue and profit. Read more »
*This blog post was originally published at Diario Médico*
May 3rd, 2011 by DavidHarlow in News, True Stories
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In recent years many health care providers and managers have told me, time and again, that the health care world is accustomed to managing confidential patient information, and therefore doesn’t need much in the way of social media training and policy development. This week brings news that should make those folks sit up and take notice. A physician in Rhode Island, who was fired for a Facebook faux pas, has now been fined by the state medical board as well. The physician posted a little too much information on Facebook — information about a patient that, combined with other publicly available information, allowed third parties to identify the patient. The details of the story are available here and here.
The key takeaway from this story — and the Johnny-come-lately approach to health care social media taken by the Rhode Island hospital in question and the Boston teaching hospital that the Boston Globe turned to for comment — is that prevention is the best medicine. Read more »
*This blog post was originally published at HealthBlawg :: David Harlow's Health Care Law Blog*
