Medical Practices, Physicians Ignore Social Media at Their Peril

Physicians should actively manage their online presence to present a positive image, a social media expert advised during a Monday AGA session about disruptive threats to GI practices.

During Digestive Disease Week® (DDW) 2015, Lee A. Aase, director of the Mayo Clinic Center for Social Media, Rochester, MN, said that staying active on social media and online, especially on LinkedIn and Twitter, reinforces a physician's positive message.

The creation of positive content can push away negative information such as lukewarm comments on sites that review doctor performance.

"The solution to pollution is dilution," Aase said.

He said that physicians must stay vigilant so that content they create dominates the first page of online search results by name.

Posting a video on YouTube that includes the physician's name helps drive positive content to the top of search results, Aase said. He also recommended that physicians actively manage their profiles on Doximity, a social networking platform for physicians.

But physicians shouldn't dwell on the downsides and difficulties of maintaining a professional presence in the digital world. Aase pointed out that these tools help build new and stronger relationships with patients. Twitter is great for sifting through the increasing amount of clinical information and research that is now available to improve care.

"These technologies do present some amazing opportunities," he said. "So the same type of disruption that causes some of the difficulties also has opportunities for us, as well."

The online world can even lead to patient-led medical research. Aase cited an example from Mayo, where a woman from Virginia essentially gathered participants for a pilot study on a rare coronary disease by seeking out people with the condition on an online message board. This was after her doctor could not answer her questions about the condition.

"It all came about from a woman who decided it was not good enough not to know," Aase said.
Mayo established the Center for Social Media to accelerate the use of social media in improving health at Mayo and to provide information on how other facilities around the world can adopt the strategies, Aase said.

Highlighting another disruptive threat, Joel V. Brill, MD, AGAF, chief medical officer at FAIR Health, Inc., in Phoenix, AZ, talked about narrow networks, where payors and employers put together provider panels comprised of practices that can prove value, which is a function of both cost and outcomes.

For practices in areas where a large system employs a significant number of referring doctors, that means paying attention to that system.

"What are you doing now to demonstrate value to that entity?" he asked the audience.

Lawrence Kosinski, MD, MBA, AGAF, a managing partner with a gastroenterology group in the Chicago, IL, area, focused on exchanges. Exchanges were established through the Affordable Care Act, but private companies now are also adopting the strategy for their employees.

Since many of the people gaining coverage through exchanges have not had insurance before, he said, these exchange customers represent a way for practices to increase revenue.

"New paying customers are the answer," Dr. Kosinski said.

Sourced through Scoop.it from: www.gastro.org

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