Pauline Chen goes social media on us in a recent column.
Focusing on Twitter, she recalls a patient with Buerger’s disease who tried to quit smoking. Unfortunately, the patient wasn’t successful, and had to have multiple amputations.
Dr. Chen wonders if like Twitter, blogs or Facebook had existed back then, would the patient “have felt a little less isolated and perhaps been able to quit smoking if [she] texted a word of encouragement to him every few days, interacted through blog comments, or directed him to an online community of people who were dealing with the exact same disease?”
Despite the growth of social media and its role in facilitating patient empowerment, the health system doesn’t allow doctors to fully partake in its benefits, as, “taking on the responsibilities of yet another form of communication can also be onerous for physicians, many of whom already feel overburdened by multiple demands on their time.”
Indeed, the system needs to change first, before doctors can fully embrace Twitter, and the like. Many doctors aren’t even e-mailing patients, a technology that is more than a decade old. How can they expected to make the jump to Twitter, something that, sadly, many physicians haven’t even heard of?
Related posts:
- Can Twitter be used for doctor-patient communication?
- How much would you pay to e-mail your doctor?
- Informed consent is central to the doctor-patient relationship
- Should hospitals use Twitter to follow patients?
- Tips for doctors who use Twitter
- Surgeons using Twitter during an operation, is live-tweeting medical procedures the future?
- Hospitals are using social media, like Twitter, Facebook, and blogs, for advertising to patients
{ 6 comments }
Many doctors are technophobic! What we are waiting for is a system that makes our lives significantly easier without huge cost or time outlays.
I think it is time for teaching institutions and medical schools to put this, and other IT issues like telemedicine, into the curriculum so it becomes an expected aspect of healthcare further into the century.
Actually, many docs are technophiles. I’m a doc. I use twitter, facebook, email. It’s essential to my life. But I practice as part of multispecialty group. My use of technology is limited by HIPAA and the perverse incentives we labor under (the “tyranny of the visit”). Emailing patients would happen “on my own time”, which would mean more time away from my kids. Health care reform needs to address these aspect of patient care in order to bring us all up to the 21st century and Web 2.0.
There are bazillions of web sites with discussion boards for people with various medical issues.
I find it hard to believe that there aren’t already sites for people who are trying to quit smoking. It’s all a matter of how motivated the person is to get support – can you spell “google?”
I suppose it would be nice to interact with your doctor, if he/she had that medical problem and had quit smoking themselves they could offer up support.
Why limit yourself to one doctor who probably can’t say much because of HIPAA when you could connect with regular folks who share your problem? Then you’ve got a much stronger collective to rely on.
The best medical advice that you can get is from your own doctor who knows and examined you. As Mark Twain said “Be careful about reading health books. You may die of a misprient”. Access is often a problem, however, as after all is said and done, medicine is still a retail business. The best bet for the future is to improve access via technologies such as email. That is why we launched our online service, that provides eamil communications for doctors and their patients.
Email Services can be great ways for patients and clinicans to communicate. But who pays for it? Do patients pay a fee (which would be a barrier to some people)? Does their insurance pay a fee to support “advanced communications”? Do docs just do it out of the goodness of their heart and donate time because it’s a nice thing to do and patients like it? Widespread adption will not be feasble until the value of these types of communications are recognized and reimbursed (remember the tyranny of the visit). If society depends on “volunteerism” for this aspect of care, the care will be selective and spotty at best.
One of my recent primary care physicians interacted with me through a secure email connection which is provided by the local hospital for all of their “associates”. It made a world of difference for me – I could drop my physician an email when things weren’t working right, or when I had a quick question about something we’d already discussed.
None of my other physicians use email … and it seems as if a door has closed for me. Twitter, email … WHATEVER … would be wonderful if they (or their office crew) kept a window open in that way.
However, there would have to be some remuneration … if this started to take chunks of time from the professionals involved, then there has to be some sort of limit, and also some sort of prearranged fee. The internet should not become a “freebie way” to reach your physician. Insurance companies would also need to begin covering that sort of care.
Finally, the sort of internet care that simply replaces the telephone – for example, calling in for a prescription refill, or changing an appointment date, should not become a fee driven service.
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