Social Media Improves Physician-Patient Relationships

Patients Want More Than a 15-Minute Office Visit

Do you find your healthcare patients always wanting more of your time?  Do you struggle at the end of the day to finish dictation and to return phone calls that keep you at your medical practice office for longer than you expected? You are not alone.  Many doctors are now turning to social media platforms to save themselves time and provide their patients with the answers that they are looking for regularly. Here are several reasons to give healthcare social media a try.

Be Ahead Of The Curve

• Doctors’ use of social media and virtual communication for patient care is expected to increase under the Accountable Care Act, which encourages electronic health records via the “electronic exchange” of health information and encourages doctors to implement strategies to improve the  quality of care for patients and produce measurable outcomes.
• A study published online in March found that 60 % of state public health departments already use Twitter or another social media site (mostly to distribute information rather than interact with patients; however, engaging online with patients is key for a successful healthcare social media strategy).
• A survey last summer of 501 randomly selected doctors found that more than 20 % engaged in emails with patients over secure networks, and similar numbers had websites allowing patients to schedule visits or download test results. Only 6 % communicated with patients through social media platforms — that translates to about 60,000 doctors nationwide.
• Hard numbers are scarce on exactly how many of the nation’s nearly 1 million doctors use virtual communication for patient care, but anecdotal evidence suggests the numbers are rising.

Saves You Time At The End Of The Day

• Responding to emails, posting blogs, sending Tweets and Facebook posts between patients will reduce the time medical professionals will have to spend returning phone calls at the end of the day
• Information regarding common disease symptoms, prevention and disease management methods, along with frequently asked questions can be addressed via social media. Not only will your patients find this helpful, but they will more easily share healthcare tips and info with their family and friends via social media.
• Having a full-service social media marketing agency manage and implement a healthcare social media strategy for your medical practice helps saves you and your staff time — Aiden Marketing is a social media marketing agency that will do all of the social media work while you focus on caring for your patients.

Your Patients Will Thank You

• Patients appreciate and find communication outside of traditional business hours comforting.
• Additional communication with patients outside of the exam room will increase trust between the physicians and their patient.
• Patients can obtain more healthcare tips and information via social media than many of them would otherwise access on their own. — This could lead to improving their day-to-day health and reducing the number of phone calls to the doctor’s office.
• Patients like physicians that are sincerely concerned about their health and are dedicated to educating the patient with up-to-date and relevant healthcare information.

Utilizing social media marketing makes perfect sense for a medical practice, hospital, clinic or other healthcare organization whose goal is to improve the health of people.  By implementing social media in your practice, you can be a leader in industry that is ahead of the curve by using healthcare social media to foster deeper physician-patient relationships by providing easy access to healthcare information to your current and prospective patients online.  Ultimately, improved physician-patient relationships that come from leveraging healthcare social media will also result in more recommendations and better reviews for your medical practice online (and offline) from your patients.