If you’re trying to grow a medical practice (or just maintain current patient population), there are many online marketing tools to leverage. Think HIPPA laws prevent you from using social media? Not according to the American Medical Association. They published new guidelines for social media use by medical professionals recommending:

• stringent use of privacy settings on social networking sites
• routinely monitoring your practice’s Internet presence: ensure the personal and professional information on your website and content posted about the practice is accurate and appropriate
• maintaining appropriate patient-physician relationship boundaries
• ensuring patient privacy and confidentiality (but of course!)
• separating personal and professional content online
• recognizing how online content can affect your reputation among patients and colleagues

Hospitals using Social Media

How many hospitals are using social media these days? American Medical News recently reported survey results counting 871  hospitals using some social media. New York (93) , Michigan (56), California (53), Illinois (45), and Texas (45) showed the most active social media use by hospitals.

Private Medical Practices Leveraging Internet Marketing

The figures above show hospital use of social media. For individual physician practices, numbers should be even higher. Websites can become ever more lead-generating, helping to build a patient base. Email marketing can keep patients in the fold, and give them an opportunity to refer good doctors to their friends and colleagues. Doctors always have plenty of great content worth developing, on a host of topics that will fascinate readers of any blog or email newsletter. Physician use of social media can be effective in growing and maintaining good doctor/patient relationships, cost-effective for the marketing budget, and thoroughly respectful of patient privacy at the same time.