Twitter This: Social Media and Hospitals
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Transcript Twitter This: Social Media and Hospitals
Twitter This:
Social Media & Hospitals
Jenna Mooney, Partner
Ingrid Brydolf, Partner
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Overview
Social media can be useful to
providers: What is it? How is it
being used?
Providers have legal obligations.
Providers should be proactive with
maintaining control over content and
establishing institutional policies on
appropriate use.
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What is Social Networking?
Broad range of Internet activities
Texting
Chat rooms
Emails
Blogging
Videos
Easily accessible
Work computers
Home computers
Mobile smartphones and other devices
Inherent risks
Immediacy
Global reach
Searchable
“Email is Forever”
Expectation of a dialogue
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Online Social Networking Exploding
Facebook
>400 million users worldwide
2009 revenue: >$550 million
8 billion minutes spent on Facebook each day
Increasing corporate marketing use
Twitter
“Tweets” – max. of 140 characters
Celebrity usage – Lance Armstrong, Brittany Spears
Corporate use growing exponentially
Over 55 million users / month and growing
Largest user demographic: 35-49
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Online Social Networking Exploding
LinkedIn
Facebook for professionals
Over 50 million registered users
MySpace
Similar to Facebook
Less than half the users at over 100 million
YouTube
Online videos
Blogs
The original social networking tool
Non-provider hosted sites (external sites)
Different legal obligations may arise when a provider hosts blogs and
other media on its own servers
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What’s in it for Health Care Providers?
April 2010: Hospitals have established:
250 YouTube channels
300 Facebook pages
400 Twitter accounts
Social Media is useful to Providers:
Launch innovative advertising/marketing campaigns
Provide patients & families with information
Remain competitive with other providers that have
established social media presences.
Use in hiring and firing staff?
Possible discrimination claims?
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Legal Obligations: Confidentiality
Providers are ‘covered entities’ under HIPAA
& state law
Affirmative legal obligation to safeguard
protected patient information
Patient names, addresses, email addresses
Creating social media content does not
implicate privacy laws as long as providers do
not post patient information without
authorization
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Legal Obligations: Practice of
Medicine
Interactions with patients
Malpractice risk
Disclaimers (character limits with some media)
Licensure issues
Privacy
Boundary issues
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Legal Obligations: Disclaimers
Given informal nature of social media,
providers can remind online visitors that
posts are public:
“This is a public site. Please do not post
personal information about yourself or others,
including medical information.”
Note: outside scope of this presentation, but
with institution-hosted media (e.g., blogs), a
more complete terms & conditions notice
may be appropriate.
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What’s in it for Health Care
Providers?
Can you say 11,000,000 hits?
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Administrative Controls
Wide range of administrative controls
available to providers that establish social
media presence
Facebook:
Content posting restricted to page administrators
only (public cannot post content)
Closed group – persons must formally request to
“join” group before having posting access
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Employee (Mis-)Use of Social
Networks
For personal purposes, at work
For personal purposes, impacting your business
Bad-mouthing the company
Trade secrets theft
Harassment
At work, for business purposes
Monitoring comments on hospital services
Answering consumer questions
Promoting services / education
Research
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Why Health Care Providers Should
Care
61% of employees say that even if employers
are monitoring their social networking activities,
they won’t alter behavior
74% of employees believe it is easy to damage
a brand’s reputation via social networking sites
53% of employees say “social networking pages
are none of an employer’s business.”
*Per Deloitte’s 2009 Ethics & Workplace Survey
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Why Health Care Providers Should
Care
Only 17% of companies have programs in place
to monitor and mitigate reputational risks
Only 22% of employers have formal social
networking policies
*Per Deloitte’s 2009 Ethics & Workplace Survey
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Employer Injury
Injury to corporate reputation
Employee "venting" transmitted instantly to ever-
growing audience
Possible liability for employee postings
Defamation
Copyright infringement
False advertising claims
Discrimination/harassment
Medical information (HIPAA/GINA)
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Employer Liability
Electronic discovery issues
A new kind of “electronically stored information” (ESI)
Social media data is typically not stored on employer’s network
or system
National Labor Relations Act issues
Can be “protected, concerted activity”
Blogging about unfair employer policies
Applies to all employees, not just unionized workers
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What Should Employers Do?
Develop a policy now – don’t wait for the crisis
Convene working group to draft:
HR
Legal
IT
Marketing
PR/Corporate Communications
Employee users
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Social Media Policy Considerations
What is your culture?
Separate or integrated policy?
Allow or block access to social media websites?
Distinguish between professional use and personal use?
Extent to which provider equipment and networks can be
used for social media?
What are your needs?
Use of social networking to generate business?
Use of social networking in hiring / firing process?
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Social Media Policy Considerations
Duty to bargain with unions regarding policy?
Cross-reference in other policies?
Anti-harassment and nondiscrimination
HIPAA/GINA confidentiality
Codes of ethics
Legal review of proposed employee terminations for
social networking activity
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Social Media Policy
Providers should:
Adopt a Social Media Policy for
employees and staff
Educate staff about the contents of the
Policy
Enforce policy through imposing
consequences for violations
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Social Media Policy: Adopt
Policy should:
Set rules for what information staff can post and
say online
Remind and educate staff about obligations –
patient privacy, protecting proprietary institutional
information
Clarify appropriate relationships between staff,
patients and the public
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Social Media Policy: Educate & Enforce
Educate:
Any policy is only as good as the
institutional awareness of it
Know the policy; educate staff at hire and
push periodic updates
Enforce:
Follow through with penalties for violations
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Social Media Policy: Provisions & Examples
Policy statement: “Employees can use
social media for business-related
purposes subject to restrictions in this
Policy to ensure compliance with legal
requirements and institutional policies.”
Scope of policy – separate provisions
for institution-hosted and externally
hosted sites.
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Social Media Policy: Provisions & Examples
Rules for use:
Maintain patient privacy
Respect patients and other staff – no libelous or
defamatory speech
Safeguard proprietary institutional information
Comply with copyright, trademark and other law
Do not communicate on “behalf” of institution
No patient-specific medical advice
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Questions?
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