Physical Therapists and Social Media

Picture 11Social media helps connect and establish relationships between people with shared interests.  Facebook and Twitter are leading the charge.  But what does a Physical Therapist gain by participating in this new world of social media?  For starters: Facebook has 500 million users, each of whom is a potential patient.  Of the 30.5 million profiles available on twello.com (a twitter directory), many are searching for valuable health care information and are interested in hearing about their fellow twitter followers’ experiences.  Interestingly, of these 30.5 million tweeters, only 814 are physical therapists: underwhelming by most industry comparisons.

There are a multitude of benefits for physical therapists using social media sites like Twitter and Facebook.  Not only do these sites help clinics connect with patients and peers, they are also a great way to educate patients on who we are, what we do, provide them with valuable information about health care issues, as well as monitor patient feedback about your business.  Social media websites are an excellent source of new information for the busy physical therapist and make it easy to keep abreast of the latest evidence and trends in physical therapy with very minimal effort required.

When engaging in social media communities and communications, there are some guidelines to keep in mind with respect to ethics and patient privacy.  Here are some things to consider when collaborating with patients and colleagues via social media.   

Do: 

■      Plan what your professional goals are when developing a business page: Patient education, customer service, or simply a means for connecting with other professionals to share ideas and common interests.

■      Generate traffic to your page by adding pictures, videos, and talking about things that your patients will be interested in.

Don’t:

■      “Friend” patients but instead, encourage them to “like” you on your page.

■      Post unprofessional content.

■      Respond to personal medical/therapy related questions (HIPPA non-compliance).

■      Post any identifying information about patients and don’t allow patients to identify themselves as patients.

■      Discuss patient specific clinical situations.

Social media will become a standard in how businesses connect with consumers and how professionals connect with other professionals.  Why not jump on the social media bandwagon and provide health care information where patients are searching for it?

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Published on Dec 07, 2010
Author: BronwynSpira
10 Comments

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I use my office fan page to show the human side of the office,share PT concepts and medical/therapy interest links. Senior employees have administrative access to post on site.
My personal page can be quite personal. I will accept pts as friends but do not request while under my care. I do have many pts that are FB friends by the nature of my coaching,retail and communality contacts. It seems to work and many new pts have contacted me first on FB.

posted by Bruce Wilk on 12.07.10 at 9:19 am

Great post, Bronwyn.

When every one of our PTs is “in the news” we post that on our practice’s Facebook page. We also cross post as much as possible. When a PT contributes to the PT Project, we cross-post this on our practices Facebook as well.

The PT Project is a great place to build links for your practice, if you’re not a contributor, email us. We will put your practices links in your bio. What you post on the PT Project can become marketing material in your practice, on your web-site, and on your Facebook page. (If you don’t understand how to do this, email me!)

Re: Facebook, Set up a “Fan” page for business, as Bronwyn says do not use your personal FB page for your practice. However, when you post to your practices fan page, “like” or “share” what you post to your personal page so that your friends can see what you’re up too. Keep on their minds for their referrals.

posted by Adam Banks on 12.07.10 at 10:24 am

I hope nobody minds a little humor but this is on topic.
http://www.hulu.com/watch/184577/saturday-night-live-moms-on-facebook?c=0:95
Only a short clip.

posted by Bruce Wilk on 12.08.10 at 4:22 pm

Browyn
Followed your advice and added Twitter to my out reach but could not find you there. Am I missing something?

posted by Bruce wilk on 12.13.10 at 6:17 pm

she is on there. if your go to http://www.twello.com you can seach her by name :)

posted by RyanOrser on 12.14.10 at 11:32 am

Our Twitter name is ForceTherEx. We are also on facebook as Force Therapeutics.

posted by Bronwyn on 12.14.10 at 11:39 am

Bronwyn
How about making us a PT Project app as a Christmas present!

posted by Bruce Wilk on 12.16.10 at 9:48 am

Bronwyn How about making us a PT Project app as a Christmas present!

posted by Martina Dotson on 12.23.10 at 3:44 pm

Great post. Sometimes it is overlooked that improperly implementing your social media marketing can actually have a negative effect on your office. It is very important to keep in mind that if your employees are using social media sites, they represent your office even on their personal pages. I would recommend possibly holding an office seminar on how to set up your security on Facebook and Twitter to avoid your patients seeing your staff’s personal information.

posted by ptbillingsolution on 02.25.11 at 8:09 am

Another key point is utilizing tools to cut down on the time needed to update your social media. With tools such as Google Alerts and linking applications, you can eliminate a majority of the leg work needed to find new articles and post to your blog or website.

posted by ptbillingsolution on 02.25.11 at 8:43 am

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