We hear so much chatter (or should we say tweeting) about Twitter. It’s certainly all the rage these days. There are many practical applications of it but when someone asks how it can best be used in health care… and add value, we need to stop and think. Certainly we are all intimately aware of health care’s unique challenges – security, interoperability,professional liability, and the like.
Having said that, let’s try to keep it simple and come up with a few but practical uses.
- Sports trainers – injury prevention tips for coaches
- Lactation consultants – tips on breastfeeding
- Medical coders – tips and discussion relating to medical coding
- Sharing and discussing changes in reimbursement or coding requirements
- Clinical trial recruitment
- Primary care and pediatric offices – what’s going around alerts
- Alzheimer’s caregiver support
- Pediatric offices – tips for new parents
- Women’s Health – tips for preventing Osteoporosis, discussing birth control or pregnancy
- Collecting and sharing patient satisfaction feedback
- Collecting and sharing patient stories
- Providing smoking cessation support
- Recruitment of health care staff
- Discussion regarding advanced medical directives and end of life issues
We will continue to contribute to this list as we identify new items. Please feel free to leave your thoughts and suggestions as well.