Healthcare Daily Digest for 22 February 2013: How Your Healthcare Provider is Abusing Facebook

Facebook is tricky enough as it is (for instance: why aren’t you Facebook friends with me? Do you not like me? I talk to you EVERY DAY. Also, why aren’t you liking my status updates? Why aren’t you consoling me when I post vague messages like “::sigh:: I guess everything happens for a reason”? WHY? WHY? WHY?) and now, it turns out, maybe your doctor is talking smack about you on his Facebook page.

“A recent survey of over 4,000 physicians showed that 67 percent use social media in a professional capacity. Many write blogs or use Twitter to broadcast their insights and opinion to a wider audience. Others have posted videos on YouTube. They are leveraging the strengths of social media: a fast, free and open channel of communication that is easy to use.”

But sometimes, that professional capacity is: griping about patients. “So I have a patient who has chosen to either no-show or be late (sometimes hours) for all of her prenatal visits, ultrasounds and NSTs. She is now 3 hours late for her induction. May I show up late to her delivery?” one doctor posted on her Facebook page.

There’s also this tidbit: “In 2009, several nurses were fired from a California hospital for posting information about patients on Facebook. An egregious misuse of social media by doctors occurred in Haiti after the 2010 earthquake, when several U.S. doctors who had gone over to assist in relief efforts posted photos of naked and unconscious patients in operating rooms, and of doctors drinking and posing with grins and ‘thumbs up’ in front of patients or coffins.”

Oh, doctors. I expect better from you.

Friday headlines for Friday:

• Speaking of Facebook: Eduardo Saverin, co-founder of Facebook, believes the next big thing in Internet will come from the two industries, healthcare and education.

• And You Know What ELSE is Wrong with You?: Leah Binder at Forbes.com wants you to know The Five Biggest Problems In Health Care Today. They are: (1) Too Much Unnecessary Care; (2) Avoidable Harm to Patients; (3) Billions of Dollars are Being Wasted; (4) Perverse Incentives in How We Pay for Care; and (5) Lack of Transparency.

• The Way We Healthcare Now: “High deductibles ask nonexperts to discern good medical practice,” runs this headline from Indiana’s News Sentinel.