Five Major Stakeholder Roles of Social Media
Patients
Social media use by patients can help them create equal communication with healthcare professionals. The patients will feel more confident in the relationships with the healthcare professionals as they increase their knowledge of treatment options. Additionally, due to social media engagement, the patients get a better understanding of their health conditions. The knowledge makes the patients feel better prepared for consultation sessions with more information about their conditions and the right questions. Social media provides a platform for the patients to receive social support that translates to a higher likelihood of communicating with the doctor during the consultation (Panahi et al., 2016). Social media allows patients to learn and enhance their health communication, significantly boosting confidence, and active communication with healthcare providers.
Physicians (and other outpatient care)
Social media has helped physicians create more harmonious relationships with patients as the latter release their negative emotions through the interactions. Social media makes things better for physicians as they can easily exchange ideas and cases and engage in meaningful discussions on various practice management challenges. The physicians also use social media to make referrals, market their practices, disseminate their research to the relevant groups, and engage in health advocacy. Surani et al. (2017) affirm that social media is a tool some physicians use for communicating directly with patients on augmenting clinical care.
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Hospitals, Payers (employers, health plans)
Hospitals or healthcare provides today are resorting to social media as a platform for outcomes-based measurement. They use social media for collaborating with partners or organizations in coordinating care. Panahi et al. (2016) explain that most hospitals in the United States are already seeing first on social media cases and thus helping them build trust with consumers’ encounters with the patients or clients being. Similarly, social media is changing the focus of health insurers to population health. They use social media as a way of enlisting more people into health or medical insurance. They use of social media to market their companies as advocates for patients has shown to help them understand the needs of potential members better, which guides their data aggregation and comprehension of the members’ needs or preferences.
Health information
Social media has increased the availability, presence, and accessibility to healthcare information easy to patients, practitioners, and the general populace. The online communities have made news articles, listening to experts, researching medical developments, consultation between colleagues on patient issues, and networking more accessible than ever. Social media also allows for discussion on various health information, facts, rumors, and untrue healthcare information (Hors-Fraile et al., 2016). As a result, it brings enlightenment as the participants can further delve into the data to determine the truth from lies or myths.
Technology (IT)
Social media use for healthcare purposes is a crucial accelerator and catalyst of technological advancement in innovation and use. It provides feedback and suggestions on the preference or effectiveness of various technologies in healthcare. The technology personnel use the information to improve existing technologies or come up with better ones. For instance, in medicine, social media is guiding the direction and ways digital technology helps transform unsustainable healthcare systems into sustainable ones. Social media is helping to equalize the relationships between healthcare professionals and patients (McNeill & Davenport, 2014). It catalyzes the provision of cheaper technology solutions for healthcare needs, the development of faster and more efficient healthcare technology solutions, and its crucial role in beating the hardest of healthcare issues such as cancer.
Will social media improve practice? How so?
Yes. Social media can not only improve but is already improving several practices. For instance, social media can help initiate a social revolution that reflects the clients’ long-held wishes. Such wishes could be for simplicity, technology, convenience, autonomy, and immediacy. As both the healthcare providers and the clients interact on social media, they can understand what needs action. The responsible stakeholders deliberate on it to effect the necessary changes. Social media can democratize data, which has significant implications on healthcare analytics outcomes (Kotsenas et al., 2018). The practice could be as simple as changing the delivery of a particular medication or as complex as making adjustments to a surgical procedure whose demand for change begins from social media interactions. It goes through the researchers and policymakers, and eventually, the changes are made based on factual outcomes.
References
Hors-Fraile, S., Atique, S., Mayer, M. A., Denecke, K., Merolli, M., & Househ, M. (2016). The unintended consequences of social media in healthcare: new problems and new solutions. Yearbook of medical informatics, (1) , 47.
Kotsenas, A. L., Arce, M., Aase, L., Timimi, F. K., Young, C., & Wald, J. T. (2018). The strategic imperative for the use of social media in health care. Journal of the American College of Radiology, 15(1) , 155-161.
McNeill, D., & Davenport, T. H. (2014). Analytics in Healthcare and the Life Sciences: Strategies, Implementation Methods, and Best Practices. Pearson Education.
Panahi, S., Watson, J., & Partridge, H. (2016). Social media and physicians: exploring the benefits and challenges. Health informatics journal, 22(2) , 99-112.
Surani, Z., Hirani, R., Anita, E., Quisenberry, L., Varon, J., Surani, S., et al. (2017). Social media usage among health care providers. BMC research notes, 10(1) , 654.
