OK, You Want to Do Some Health Care Social Media. What's Next?

No social media is
complete without it!

Since you're reading the Disease Management Care Blog, you already have some sense of the emerging impact of social media on health care. Yet, thanks to this "Top health industry issues of 2012: Connecting in uncertainty" report from PwC, the DMCB was reminded in a very short chapter on the topic that for population health service providers, it's not just a matter of setting up a "Facebook" and a "Twitter" account and doing internet stuff, like building brand and selling more services and engaging clients. 

That stuff is important, but PwC reminds us that social media has other important roles. "Outward" social media can also act as a listening post (for example, becoming aware of service perceptions like this before they reach a critical mass) and notification tool (such as patient alerts).  Then there's "inward" social media, which can collaboratively link your workforce and allied professionals for online problem solving (there are lots in the public domain, by the way).

All well and good, says the DMCB but once you commit to investing in social media and setting up some accounts, what's next?  While the DMCB doesn't usually reflect other bloggers, it recommends these well written Part I and Part II posts courtesy of David Harlow's Health Care Law Blog.

Mr. Harlow recommends that companies think early about the patient confidentiality rules imposed by HIPAA, professional codes of conduct and underrecognized threats from the Federal Trade Commission and National Labor Relations Board.  The eye-opener for the DMCB was the need to develop local, flexible, inclusive and protective organizational policies backed up by training that reminds users that they are "ambassadors" for the company on their social media "property.'