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The Shortcomings Of Many Physician Rating Websites

Prepared Patient Publication Logo “We’re Listed With the Plumbers Now”

Angie’s List can help you locate a reputable handyman. Yelp can push you in the direction of the perfect restaurant for your anniversary dinner. Amazon’s consumer reviews can even help you choose the TV that will fit in the corner of your den. So why wouldn’t you turn to the Internet to find your next doctor?

39-year-old Jennifer Stevens did just that when she needed an obstetrician for her first child. Not wanting to reveal her pregnancy too soon by asking friends for suggestions for a good OB, she turned to the Web for more information on potential physicians. She soon found that a lot of the information she needed to make this important decision was missing. “A lot of sites gave stars, but I didn’t really know what those stars meant. I just wasn’t comfortable picking an OB based on that kind of vague information,” she said.

Lindsay Luthe, a 30-year old Washington, D.C. resident, consulted the popular ratings website Yelp after asking her friends to recommend a physician. “I perused the reviews for this particular doctor and saw how positive they were. Those reviews, combined with my friend’s personal recommendation, led me to make an appointment with the doctor. I think I even used the contact info on the Yelp page to call the office,” she said.

The success of physician ratings websites—such as HealthGrades, or RateMyMD, among many others—has been mixed. Read more »

*This blog post was originally published at Prepared Patient Forum: What It Takes Blog*

The Year In Review: Social Media Medical Stories

2011 was a very intense and exciting year regarding the developments and new insights of the relationship between medicine/healthcare and social media. Here are my favourite stories from 2011 selected and featured month by month.

January

I had the honour to be included in the Advisory Board of the Mayo Clinic Center for Social Media; I wrote about how a Samsung Galaxy Tab changed totally my online activities, how Google Translate can be used in medicine and featured HealCam, a medical alternative of ChatRoulette.

February

Facebook diagnosis by surgeon saved a friend; there was a lively discussion whether pharma companies can edit Wikipedia entries about their own products, it turned out Wikipedia can be a key tool for global public health promotion; and Scienceroll won the Best Medical Technology/Informatics Blog category for the third time in a row in the Medgadget’s Weblog Awards.

March Read more »

*This blog post was originally published at ScienceRoll*

Should Hospitals Manage Their Physicians’ Online Reputations?

I spoke to a group of academic physicians recently.  Afterward I was and asked, “Shouldn’t my hospital be responsible for my digital footprint?  I don’t have time to look after that sort of thing.  And wouldn’t it make sense for them to promote my research?”

4 thoughts:

1.  Online reputation management of academic physicians should be an individual, not institutional, responsibility. The question reflects a belief that your reputation is the job of “the marketing people.”  No institution will ever be as invested in your future as you are.  While there are hospitals that do a good job supporting their faculty and staff, you can’t assume it to be the case.  No one looks after you like you.

2.  Dig your well before you’re thirsty. That’s the name of a brilliant pre-digital book written by Harvey Mackey.  He suggested that the time to invest in relationships is before you need them.  Medicine is changing fast and you’ll never know how long you’ll be where you’re at.  Better yet, you never know what opportunities could come your way when people find you.  And if you want to experience the land before time when people used colored pencils, Rolodexes, and rotary phones, read Dig Your Well. Read more »

*This blog post was originally published at 33 Charts*

How To Make Meaningful Use Of Social Media

I know this woman – a physician.  She spends a lot of time on Twitter.  She has a Tumblr presence but it’s sparse and not very memorable.  All day long she polishes her Twitter presence.  She’s everyone’s friend.  And to her credit she’s a wonderful curator.  We caught up recently and she wanted to know how she could bring herself to the next level.  Despite her time and investment in the latest real-time social tools she felt that her ideas didn’t get the traction that they deserved.

Here’s what I suggested:  Twitter works for interaction and dissemination.  But ultimately you have to create the stuff that defines you.  Retrievable text, video and audio is where your ideas will live.

It’s about content, not Klout.  You can share and engage, but it’s what you make that lasts.

*This blog post was originally published at 33 Charts*

The Tired Medical Blogger

Ever feel like you’re kind of stuck and you need a change? I was there last week. With the upcoming Thanksgiving week, life was adding more stress that was difficult to handle. For weeks now, I felt like I was taking all my efforts and playing catch up. Don’t get me wrong. I’m very happy where I’m at right now professionally and personally. I was just tired.

“Social Media Fatigue” is a dirty little secret that the early adopters never write about – especially those in health care social media. That’s why I was surprised when a few months ago, my good friend, Seattle Mama Doc wrote the post “Online Sabbitical.”

I’m taking an online sabbatical this month. Consider this an act of both self-reflection and self-awareness but also an act of self-preservation. As any blogger knows, blogging every few days, taking photographs daily, approving and responding to comments 24 hours a day (7 days a week), while authoring content in your head every few paces, is an entirely consuming experience. Blogging has completely changed my life. And this job is an utter privilege… But I’ve been consuming media, blogging, and authoring content without reprieve since November 11, 2009.

Now, my blogging frequency and my podcast frequency have Read more »

*This blog post was originally published at Family Medicine Rocks Blog*

Latest Interviews

IDEA Labs: Medical Students Take The Lead In Healthcare Innovation

It’s no secret that doctors are disappointed with the way that the U.S. healthcare system is evolving. Most feel helpless about improving their work conditions or solving technical problems in patient care. Fortunately one young medical student was undeterred by the mountain of disappointment carried by his senior clinician mentors…

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How To Be A Successful Patient: Young Doctors Offer Some Advice

I am proud to be a part of the American Resident Project an initiative that promotes the writing of medical students residents and new physicians as they explore ideas for transforming American health care delivery. I recently had the opportunity to interview three of the writing fellows about how to…

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Latest Book Reviews

Book Review: Is Empathy Learned By Faking It Till It’s Real?

I m often asked to do book reviews on my blog and I rarely agree to them. This is because it takes me a long time to read a book and then if I don t enjoy it I figure the author would rather me remain silent than publish my…

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The Spirit Of The Place: Samuel Shem’s New Book May Depress You

When I was in medical school I read Samuel Shem s House Of God as a right of passage. At the time I found it to be a cynical yet eerily accurate portrayal of the underbelly of academic medicine. I gained comfort from its gallows humor and it made me…

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Eat To Save Your Life: Another Half-True Diet Book

I am hesitant to review diet books because they are so often a tangled mess of fact and fiction. Teasing out their truth from falsehood is about as exhausting as delousing a long-haired elementary school student. However after being approached by the authors’ PR agency with the promise of a…

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