Beating physician burnout with private networking for healthcare

With studies consistently showing 1 in 3 doctors burned out on any given office day, adding the learning curve of just one… social media sites could be the last straw in your workload. And the social media consultants never recommend you do just one. They always recommend a “strategy” and list the sites in groups of three and four..

…any one of them can be overwhelming to an already busy physician. (The Happy MD)

How true! Social media can be overwhelming to you because it is chaotic and more importantly social media shines as a medium for fashion, advertising and entertainment.

Why should you be doing fashion, advertising and entertainment when your core business is medicine?

You need to “frame the problem” correctly if you want to get ROI from social connections.

1. Clearly recognize the stated/presented problem (Beat physician burnout)
2. Formulate a clear interpretation (If I could spend more time with people I love and still be a good doctor, that would be a good thing)
3. Don’t hold to a preconceived solution (I have to use social media because everyone is doing it)
4. Use your own horse-sense about the problem (If I have a nickel in my pocket, why should I spend it on Twitter?)
5. Consider views of others (other physicians, not just the social media marketing consultants and the PwC of the world)
6. Formulate the problem in solution free terms (How can I achieve easier and faster decision making and spend less time fighting fires with patients)
7. State the criteria a good solution should meet (Low price, productive within the hour? intuitive and easy to use)
8. Determine if these criteria are endorsed by other stakeholders (Can your patients use the solution with no special training?)

When we reframe the problem as  ”How can I spend more time with people I love and still be a good doctor”? then the answer is clearly not social media.

The answer is private social networking for you and your patients.  Without the distraction and chaos of social media but with the extremely productive tools that have developed over the past few years.

Private social networking for healthcare helps you improve the data you get from your patients by virtue of the connectivity it provides.

Private social networking for healthcare offers:

1. Private messaging  between doctor and patient without the privacy exposure and time consuming distraction of email and Facebook. This saves time
2. Make it easy to distribute guidance directly and discreetly to the patient and care givers. Guidance may include information such as medications, treatments, tests, follow ups etc. This also saves time
3. Make it easy for your patient and caregivers to update you with relevant data on a timeline such as: blood pressure, pulse, dizziness, general feeling, appetite, clarity of speech, movement stability as well as classified events such as falling, nausea, blood pressure drops/peaks, medication taken (what, how much, when, who gave) and treatments performed (what, when, who gave). This makes it easier and faster for you to make decisions.

There is ROI in this model because it provides benefits on the supply side (you – the doctor) and on the demand side (your patients/caregivers).

Benefits for doctors

1. You save time collecting and guessing at data since you can use data received directly from patient in-between office visits. Better data means easier and faster decisions.
2. Better data helps achieve earlier and more consistent diagnosis and reduce the cost of taking the wrong path of treatment.
3. Easier and faster decisions means that tou can treat more patients without sacrificing quality of care and responsiveness.

Benefits for patients

1. Helps patient / caregivers better understand the patient’s condition and the  plan.
2. Improve execution of the plan and management of the  clinical issue.
3. Provides intangible advantage for the patient: Knowing that someone is listening and that treatment can be improved using the latest data on their condition which may save unnecessary visits to the office.

But above all – better data and understanding of the issues on both sides heightens patient trust and confidence which contributes in itself to the quality of the doctor-patient workflow.

And that my friend is killer ROI

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