Want a doctor to treat you via social media?

Don’t hold your breath — unless you look good blue.

In June, a study by MedData Group found that 44 percent of U.S. physicians weren’t using social media sites for professional services.

If doctors are using social networking as part of their job, it’s profession-related sites that were the platforms of choice.

In a story posted at eMarketer, it was disclosed that “around one-third of respondents used LinkedIn, and 29 percent were active on online physician communities, compared with just 3 percent who used online patient portals.”

Doctors are not gravitating toward social sites that are popular among the general public. These experienced low engagement among physicians.

Why the hesitancy?

It’s not for lack of knowledge. Rather, doctors cite “patient privacy and a lack of time” as the leading reasons they stay away from using social networks for their doctoring pursuits.

Polling by Digital Insights Group revealed that the general consensus among physicians is that social just isn’t an important resource when it comes to doing their jobs. Only 14 percent of primary care physicians said that social networks were a somewhat or very important clinical resource, compared with 30 percent who said they “weren’t important at all.”

When doctors do turn to digital resources to make decisions, they’re most likely using search engines, according to April 2014 research also conducted by MedData Group. Among U.S. physicians surveyed, a whopping 78 percent said search engines were the online resource they used in the medical decision-making process. A mere 5 percent cited social media.

Source: mhealthwatch.com