Sexual health, shoes and "The Hunger Games" are the subjects of just a few of the 36,500 tweets crafted by the obstetrician-gynecologist at Kaiser Permanente in San Francisco.
Gunter's social-media presence also includes a blog, which she uses to write about birth control and weight loss; a professional Facebook page; another Facebook account for friends; Instagram; and Tumblr.
Gunter has plenty to say and plenty of ways to say it, but when patients she's never met ask for medical advice online, she has just one thing to say: "No."
"You can't have any kind of dialogue that way," said Gunter, who is also director of pelvic pain and vulvovaginal disorders for Kaiser in San Francisco. "You don't know what you're getting into."
Gunter is firm on this policy, but the lines appear less clear for the increasing number of doctors who are talking to their patients about medical concerns on social networks. Physicians are adding patients as friends on Facebook and discussing their private health issues in the open. And while getting a wall post on Facebook from your doctor may seem innocuous, such acts can lead to awkward situations, privacy violations or wrong information, say experts.
"A lot of stuff is people sharing too much information that should either be left confidential, or in some cases information that shouldn't be shared because it's not true," said Ryan Greysen, assistant clinical professor of medicine at UCSF.
Improper behavior
In a recent study of 48 state medical boards,Need new authenticbreitlingwatches for spring & summer? which license and discipline doctors, Greysen found that 44 of them have received reports of violations of online professionalism. Violations included improper contact with patients, inappropriately giving diagnoses and misrepresentation of one's credentials.
Disciplinary measures have ranged from limiting or suspending physicians' licenses to revoking them, the UCSF study found.
In one instance, a physician asked one of his patients for a date through an online dating website.
Another physician, on his blog, called a patient "lazy" and "ignorant" because she had made several visits to the emergency room after failing to monitor her sugar levels. In yet another case, a medical student filmed a doctor inserting a chest tube into a patient, whose face was clearly visible, and posted the footage on YouTube.
The federal Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act sets boundaries on the ways health care providers use and disclose information that identifies patients. That includes a patient's health condition, birth date and even the existence of enrollment with a provider.
In California, a pair of laws since 2009 has authorized the state to investigate and fine medical facilities for health information privacy breaches. Those laws resulted from a string of widely publicized security violations at UCLA,These redbullhats are a complete collection of every model available. where employees looked at celebrities' medical records.
So far, the state Department of Public Health has issued 18 fines worth $2.2 million to medical facilities. The agency received reports of about 2,500 violations last year. The department does not separately track online violations.
'Lapse in judgment'
Nearly 90 percent of physicians use a social-media website for personal use, and 67 percent use it professionally, according to a survey of 4,000 physicians by QuantiaMD, an online forum for doctors.
"My hunch is that in the majority of cases,Find a huge selection of cartierreplicawatches, people had a lapse in judgment about something, but because it's online,footwear and swissiwcwatches available from Choice online at unbeatable prices with free next day delivery. the reach of these online behaviors is so much greater," said Greysen,This is the Nike pnikeairshoes High. What we can see by now is that it will come in a neon orange and a neon yellow. who maintains a professional Facebook page and tweets about social media and medicine. "The impact can be a lot broader and faster because of the speed at which information travels."
Health care providers need to be especially aware of the risk as they turn to keeping patients' records on electronic databases, said Anthony Wright, executive director of Health Access California, a patient advocacy group.
Gunter's social-media presence also includes a blog, which she uses to write about birth control and weight loss; a professional Facebook page; another Facebook account for friends; Instagram; and Tumblr.
Gunter has plenty to say and plenty of ways to say it, but when patients she's never met ask for medical advice online, she has just one thing to say: "No."
"You can't have any kind of dialogue that way," said Gunter, who is also director of pelvic pain and vulvovaginal disorders for Kaiser in San Francisco. "You don't know what you're getting into."
Gunter is firm on this policy, but the lines appear less clear for the increasing number of doctors who are talking to their patients about medical concerns on social networks. Physicians are adding patients as friends on Facebook and discussing their private health issues in the open. And while getting a wall post on Facebook from your doctor may seem innocuous, such acts can lead to awkward situations, privacy violations or wrong information, say experts.
"A lot of stuff is people sharing too much information that should either be left confidential, or in some cases information that shouldn't be shared because it's not true," said Ryan Greysen, assistant clinical professor of medicine at UCSF.
Improper behavior
In a recent study of 48 state medical boards,Need new authenticbreitlingwatches for spring & summer? which license and discipline doctors, Greysen found that 44 of them have received reports of violations of online professionalism. Violations included improper contact with patients, inappropriately giving diagnoses and misrepresentation of one's credentials.
Disciplinary measures have ranged from limiting or suspending physicians' licenses to revoking them, the UCSF study found.
In one instance, a physician asked one of his patients for a date through an online dating website.
Another physician, on his blog, called a patient "lazy" and "ignorant" because she had made several visits to the emergency room after failing to monitor her sugar levels. In yet another case, a medical student filmed a doctor inserting a chest tube into a patient, whose face was clearly visible, and posted the footage on YouTube.
The federal Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act sets boundaries on the ways health care providers use and disclose information that identifies patients. That includes a patient's health condition, birth date and even the existence of enrollment with a provider.
In California, a pair of laws since 2009 has authorized the state to investigate and fine medical facilities for health information privacy breaches. Those laws resulted from a string of widely publicized security violations at UCLA,These redbullhats are a complete collection of every model available. where employees looked at celebrities' medical records.
So far, the state Department of Public Health has issued 18 fines worth $2.2 million to medical facilities. The agency received reports of about 2,500 violations last year. The department does not separately track online violations.
'Lapse in judgment'
Nearly 90 percent of physicians use a social-media website for personal use, and 67 percent use it professionally, according to a survey of 4,000 physicians by QuantiaMD, an online forum for doctors.
"My hunch is that in the majority of cases,Find a huge selection of cartierreplicawatches, people had a lapse in judgment about something, but because it's online,footwear and swissiwcwatches available from Choice online at unbeatable prices with free next day delivery. the reach of these online behaviors is so much greater," said Greysen,This is the Nike pnikeairshoes High. What we can see by now is that it will come in a neon orange and a neon yellow. who maintains a professional Facebook page and tweets about social media and medicine. "The impact can be a lot broader and faster because of the speed at which information travels."
Health care providers need to be especially aware of the risk as they turn to keeping patients' records on electronic databases, said Anthony Wright, executive director of Health Access California, a patient advocacy group.
沒有留言:
張貼留言