Health Care Law Blog: AHLA Connections: Legal Implications of Health Care Social Media – A (dare I say) beautiful article / reference written by Bob Coffield about health care and social media.

A few things relevant to my situation that are worth repeating/thinking about in other organizations:

• The presence of an internal social network (at Kaiser Permanente, it’s called Ideabook – referenced in this presentation), helps to manage the stated concern about superiors and subordinates friending each other on public social networks. The internal social network creates a professional environment for colleagues to connect and share interests, and in the one that we use, there is no accepting or ignoring of requests – a colleague relationship is established on request automatically.
• The presence of a useful social media policy. Here’s a link to Kaiser Permanente’s social media policy. Several people have contacted me and asked if it may be copied / used by their organization. The answer is yes.

Thanks again to Bob and team for being interested in this topic and in keeping patients engaged and protected, two of the most important types of care we provide for patients.

Several people asked for the slides after the event, so here they are in graphical form.

Lots of people prefer the slideshare.net experience when viewing slides, so if that’s what works for you, Holly has uploaded the slides here, with embedded YouTube videos.

If you’re interested in the sources/links from the presentation, they are beneath the slides, for your researching pleasure.

Comments/questions welcome, as always!

I specifically remember what Regina and the group said (in paraphrase) – “Show me the DNA of a high quality doctor.” and “Demonstrate that this/you are a doctor that I’m going to love.”

This is a very different need than “Tell me what I need to know about when to get a flu shot.” Not that patients don’t want this information also, of course.

In doing some more reading and experiencing, I thought about the outcome of social media in health care in creating engagement with the profession and health system compared to the outcome of providing information. Beth’s blog has a nice discussion about this (Engage, then Educate) in regard to the San Francisco Symphony. My hypothesis is that the principles are the same.

With that in mind, my colleague Rahul Parikh, MD, a practicing pediatrician and accomplished writer across many venues, worked on an experiment together and we’d like your feedback.

Click on any image to make it larger

This is his physician twitterfeed for patients:

This is him tweeting one way, let’s call it “standard” (more “education”):

This is him tweeting a different way, let’s call it “DNA – Enhanced” (more “engagement”):

Here’s the input we would like:

1. Do you notice the difference in the content/approach?
2. Which way would you want your own doctor. to tweet? (or a different way not shown here)
3. If you were looking to choose a doctor, does either approach draw you more to a potential physician?

Thanks for your comments in the comments, and thanks again to the patients, who continue to demonstrate that they are more than willing to help us perform well for them – all we have to do is ask.

You can also follow and tweet either Rahul (on his professional feed, different than the one above) or myself. Don’t worry, we’ll compare notes.

We can listen to the thoughts of the audience as much as we listen to the thoughts of the panelists, and you.

At today’s presentation at WHIT 5.0, I asked every audience member to write down something on a note card about what they heard today about using social media to engage patients and change the health care system. They could write a comment, a question, or just “have a nice day,” as long as they wrote something.              

Unfortunately, we ran out of time to go through these with the panel. Fortunately, the conversation can now continue in cyberspace, because the questions are written down.

Take a look. Answer one, or answer them all in the comments.

A few years ago, I was asked to prepare a presentation for leaders with two simple directives: “Ted, no powerpoint slides, and no talking heads, please.”

My response to that was equally simple: “Okay, then you’ll get to listen to the real boss/CEO/Board, the member.” (recall that Group Health Cooperative is member-governed)

Ever since then I have kept trying to include the patient perspective, and noticing that when it’s included, how compelling it is (see this photograph for proof).

Sometimes, I’ve been told, “Ted, a patient wouldn’t be appropriate for this setting.” But I still kept asking….

This time I wasn’t told that, and so I get to bring that perspective in the form of great people. They are Dave deBronkart, Regina Holliday, and Holly Potter.

Our session is in the section entitled “Consumer Connectivity: Engagement Through Social Networking,” and the title of our discussion is, “Beyond the PHR: Promoting participation at all levels: internal and external; patient, family, community.”

Holly is representing the health system perspective, though her work as Vice President of Public Relations and National Stakeholder Management for Kaiser Permanente.

What they have in common, is that they show how sometimes, your life can change, literally overnight, and social media tools are means to teach and learn from people “just like me,” to make a lasting difference.

Beyond the title, I’ve been asked to summarize what this panel will be about, which I’ll do here, with main points:

• How does a health system foster broader participation after connecting 3.3 million patients online to their health care teams?
• What are patients’ expectations for participation in health and health care using social media?
• How are patients and families leveraging social media to participate in reshaping the system itself?

I haven’t yet run these by Holly, Dave, and Regina, they are to help potential attendees know what the session is about, so there may be edits. Or if you have suggestions, post them in the comments, please.

What I see happen when this perspective is brought in is that people in the audience become less afraid/more confident in taking risks to do what they can to help people. That’s what I want to promote.

The dream part is that I engage organizers of a respected event like this to bring these exceptional experiences directly to their audiences. So, thank you WHIT 5.0, I will do my best not to let you down!

Speaking of exceptional experiences. Here is Regina’s. We’re on at 10:55 am, on Day 2, please come and join us.

Disclosure of material connection: I have not received any compensation for writing this content or moderating this panel; I am an employee of one of the organizations represented on the panel (Kaiser Permanente); I am receiving admission to the event sessions as a speaker.

I think this is great because

• The policy was developed in consultation with organizations inside and outside of health care, and can serve as a template for other health care organizations (many of whom are working to create these policies).
• The policy itself supports, rather than discourages, the use of social media in a responsible, organization-preserving way. This is a good direction, in my opinion, for an organization to take in thinking about social media use.

See what you think.

“One of the most actively discussed topics in the Twitter universe over the past couple months has been the idea that teens don’t tweet – at least not as much as older demographics, and certainly not as actively as teens who use other popular social networking sites.

Now, it appears that this story may be shifting. According to new data from comScore, younger users – specifically those in the 12-17 and 18-24 year-old demographics – are Twitter’s fastest growing audience segment. “

I would say this article falls in the "unenthusiastic about the future" category.

The author led off with the University of Florida study as a sort of example of unprofessional behavior online, and within it, cited that 50% of students shared their sexual orientation online, (as did the UF researchers, albeit in a different order than this author did, relative to other “personal information items” such as relationship status or political views).

In 2009, what’s unprofessional about sharing one’s sexual orientation (and why was it ever deemed unprofessional)?

Don’t many “traditional” physician profiles indicate marital and family status, and isn’t this sharing of a person’s sexual orientation, for those who are legally allowed to be married?

The writer’s approach seems to harken back to a different era, where “being professional” was thought of differently, based on who a person “was” (where they went to school, demographics, etc.) rather than how they behaved. Perhaps this is because there was so little information to base this judgement on.

This is why I believe social media has the potential to change the definition of what “being professional” is, in a positive way.

Just after reading this article, I came across this comment from Jay Parkinson, MD’s blog:

You shouldn’t have a resume or a CV. You should have a blog with an “About Me” section that yaps about all the things you’ve done to get where you are with full acknowledgement that most of your education, experience, and awards are worth nothing if they’re not backed by consistently interesting thoughts.

And this should be a requirement for graduating high school.

I agree with Jay. When a person’s behavior is as transparent as their given credentials, they’ll have the opportunity to show how they work to perform better for the people they serve every day.

One more thing – As I have observed many health professionals transition to communicating in an electronic world within health care systems, I have seen that they carry their caring and skill with them into new environments, as any professional would. An article about social media and professionalism should include this reality at its core.

Thanks to the American Board of Internal Medicine Foundation for joining Twitter and raising discussion about this topic!