Medicare Compliance & Reimbursement

Tip: Make sure you keep it legal before you put yourself out there.

Competition is fierce in the healthcare industry, and it’s easy to fall behind more tech savvy peers. If you aren’t advertising online or entrenched in social media yet, then you’re missing out. Every time someone searches for a provider under your specialty, don’t you want your name to be at the top of the search engine?

Here’s why: Being digitally on top is not only important to your image but suggests to your patients that you are in the health IT loop — which is essential to running a practice today. “Social media can be used to engage and inform patients in strategic ways in order to facilitate utilization of specific proven therapies,” said Kevin Campbell, MD, FACC, of North Carolina Heart and Vascular in Raleigh, N.C., during a HIMSS17 session titled “How to Manage Social Media Risk in Healthcare.”

Details: Take a look at this list of seven easy things you can do to makeover your practice’s cyber image:

1. Dedicate a worker or team to audit your online presence.
2. Analyze where you see the practice gaining and losing patients.
3. Checkout other physicians’ social and medical sites.
4. Develop a strategy to promote your practice on different social media sites like Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram.
5. Address issues on health review sites like Healthgrades and Yelp to clean up your image.
6. Research ways to make your website pop on search engines.
7. Advertise online and boost your name recognition and revenue.

Don’t forget: Before you invest in social media and online self-promotion, assess the risks, keeping HIPAA in mind. “New channels equal new risks,” advised Michael Rutty, BA, BS, a subject matter expert for information archiving for Actiance at HIMSS17 during the “How to Manage Social Media Risk in Healthcare” session. “When we talk about patient privacy, we are a very litigious society. And HIPAA guidelines have continued to expand.”