Issue link: https://beckershealthcare.uberflip.com/i/1467576
33 THOUGHT LEADERSHIP How physicians can use social media like a business card By Riz Hatton Social media is the new business card, and it may be one of the most effective ways for physicians to market themselves. Matthew Harb, MD, an orthopedic surgeon at the Centers for Advanced Ortho- paedics in Washington, D.C., with over 360,000 followers on TikTok, spoke with Becker's about why physicians should hop on the social media train. Editor's note: This piece was edited lightly for brevity and clarity. Question: What made you decide to start using social me- dia for medical work? Dr. Matthew Harb: What I've found is that social media accomplishes a bunch of different goals. The first one is it opens lines of patient communication, meaning you have a new way to interact with your patient population. You can target them directly because instead of paying for direct-to-consumer market- ing and things of that nature, the algorithms that are built into social media engines basically have the patients who are on these platforms find your chan- nel. It's providing that specific niche of patients with your content. Q: What is the benefit of physicians using social media? MH: [Surgeons] get to spend so little time in the office with our patients that social media is a tool to connect in a different manner that patients almost feel like you're speaking directly to them. You build patient rapport better, and I think you develop a deeper and more trustworthy connection with the patients as well. Q: Do you think physicians should use social media more or less? MH: I think they should definitely use it more. I think the full power of social media … we're just at the very tip of it. In the same way that businesses or most providers are listed on Google Maps, the surgeon presence will be on social media. It will basically almost be a required extension of your practice and you can look at other specialties that do this. You can look at plastic surgery doc- tors who have a huge social media presence. You can look at the dermatolo- gists, and yes, it's a lot easier for them to do it because they're dealing with cosmetic stuff. It's a little bit tougher to accomplish in orthopedics, but the same kind of thought that went into it when the plastic surgeons and derma- tologists started their social media channels is where you're going to see the other specialties go. Q: Advice for physicians looking to get into social media? MH: The hardest step of social media … and I'm not going to say it's hard because it's really not actually that difficult, but it's this mental barrier that you have to overcome of turning the camera around and filming yourself saying something and then posting it online. Most people don't like to hear their voice or see their own face on camera, but the easiest thing is you start out slow. You can start with some educational content, record a 15 second video talking about a diagnosis and a pathology. You gotta start somewhere and you start posting a couple videos and it'll grow from there. It's not an instant overnight process that happens, but you gotta start from somewhere and the easiest way is just by posting a video or a picture. n offered and limiting service, i.e. total joints which were just removed for the CMS outpa- tient list in 2020, payers should be the driving force in pushing patient care out of expensive hospitals and hospital outpatient departments. Rick Liwanag. Administrator of Gulf Coast Outpatient (Biloxi, Miss.): Patients are get- ting more knowledgeable in making decisions with their health. e more they know, the more they are involved. Going electronic: ASCs are slow to take advantage of the ben- efits of an EMR. We are just now moving from paper to electronic, even if it has been proven to save so much time and cost. Staffing: e pandemic has opened up staffing issues in healthcare, and we are recognizing how a shi is happening in addressing pay, staffing short- ages and worker burnout. Reimbursement: Quality care is dispensed in many layers, but the reimbursement does not seem to be equally dispersed. Jason Richardson. CEO of Gastroenterol- ogy of the Rockies (Louisville, Colo.): e critical force all healthcare leaders must face is the growing gap between future healthcare demand and eroding workforce. Not only do we expect the COVID-19 to transition from pandemic to endemic, but we also must prepare all our healthcare entities to serve the aging boomers. Workforce limitations and declining payment will continue to strain healthcare systems. Emily Dilley. CEO of Kearny County Hospi- tal (Lakin, Kan.): ree areas: 1. Staffing/workforce: e ability to recruit and bring in quality talent at a rate that is afford- able. If we cannot bring enough in, then we further the burnout of our current team. We need to prevent burnout and build resiliency. 2. Insurance: In theory, the concept of con- sumers (patients) shopping around to facilities that are low-cost and high-quality, i.e. high value, is great! However, why are hospitals held to price transparency when it is not until payers get in the game that it really makes a large difference in terms of the patient's abil- ity? Patients can really still only go where their insurance permits/covers, and until patients have more flexibility to act on the transparen- cy out in the market, the concept of consum- ers shopping around for healthcare is only part of the way there. 3. EMR data mining: Many hospitals have EMRs and have the ability to mine their own data. However, most small facilities do not have the resources to have a robust enough EMR system that allows them to create action- able, strategic decisions based on their own EMR data. n