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Speaker: Physicians must define online reputation
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NEW ORLEANS — Physicians need to define their online reputation to better connect with their patients, Kevin Pho, MD, told colleagues here at the American Society of Cataract and Refractive Surgery meeting.
“We in health care need to redefine ourselves. We need to stop seeing ourselves as gatekeepers of medical and drug information,” Pho said during the ASCRS Lecture on Science, Medicine and Technology. “We need to become filters for our patients and help elevate wisdom on the Web, and social media gives us so many opportunities for us to be those filters and connect with patients.”
Kevin Pho
Pho recommended his step-by-step approach to establish an online reputation, which consists of putting together a well-written biography, claiming a profile from a physician rating site, creating a profile on a professional social networking site such as LinkedIn or Doximity, and setting up the practice with a service called Google My Business.
Once a physician follows this approach, Pho advised, “Stop and ask, ‘What are my goals for social media?’”
“As you gradually become more comfortable of being visible online, you can incrementally adopt those social media platforms that fit those goals,” Pho said. “If nothing about social media resonates with you or you simply don’t have the time, you can stop after creating a profile on LinkedIn and feeding in your information to Google.”
The goal is for physicians to dominate the search engine ranking and be in control of the information that shows up when patients search for the physician, Pho said.
“If we don’t take the steps to proactively define our online reputation, someone else is going to do it for us whether we know it or not or whether we like it or not,” Pho said. “An online reputation is just as important as a reputation in the community.”
Poll results from YouGov showed that 80% of patients said that hospitals with a “strong social media presence were perceived as being cutting-edge, and 60% of patients said that social media was a factor in them choosing that hospital,” he said.
Physicians need to be more optimistic when it comes to health care and social media.
“If we just focus on the negative and frame social media as a threat, there is no way that any of us is going to touch it,” Pho said. “Social media is the most powerful communication that has come along in a generation, and if you fail to use this tool to better connect with patients or define our online reputation, I think that will be a tragically missed opportunity.” – by Nhu Te
Reference:
Pho K. ASCRS Lecture on Science, Medicine and Technology. Presented at: American Society of Cataract and Refractive Surgery meeting; May 6-10, 2016; New Orleans.
Disclosure: Pho reports he is the founder and editor of KevinMD.com.