Wednesday, July 11, 2018

How to Use Social Media Safely in Your Healthcare Practice


While healthcare practitioners and organizations should be careful of the potential dangers of using social media carelessly while sharing information, its positive impacts on the success of a medical practice cannot be ignored as well. If used in an appropriate manner, social media can be very beneficial for your healthcare organization while continuing to maintain patient privacy and confidentiality.

Communicate with patients
You can effectively use social media, in accordance to healthcare compliance Las Vegas obviously, as a great tool to communicate general information about your medical practice, such as office policies, websites, availability, and appointment scheduling. Social media can be a great platform to provide patients with direct links to secure websites where the patients can log in securely and have access to their information.

Educate your patients
Healthcare organizations can also use social media to effectively educate their patients on the conditions and diseases that are treated on the facility, procedures performed, emerging technology, events in news, and medical symptoms. Pictures of your medical staff and physicians and their pictures can also be shared to better connect with their patients. Educating patients on healthcare policies can also help prevent Medicare investigations.

Interact with your patients
While internet isn’t a great platform for sharing private information, social media can be utilized for general Question & Answer type conversations. There are some medical practices who have successfully set up specific scheduled hours for answering questions asked by patients on social media and official websites. If a medical practice is receiving high traffic on their social media handle, they may consider designating a staff member to respond to the postings, comments and questions.