AMA Social Media Use Policy

Yesterday one of our subscribers asked us if we had any guidance for carrying out  a social media strategy for his practice.  We thought this would be a good opportunity to post for everyone’s benefit the AMA’s adopted social media use policy released last month.  This policy is intended to help health care providers protect patient privacy. The policy also addressed physicians’ staff personal and professional reputations.

Upon release of the policy, AMA Board Member Mary Anne McCaffree, MD gave the following statement: “Using social media can help physicians create a professional presence online, express their personal views and foster relationships, but it can also create new challenges for the patient-physician relationship. The AMA’s new policy outlines a number of considerations physicians should weigh when building or maintaining a presence online.”

AMA has posted the following recommendations for physicians in maintaining an online presence:

• Physicians should be cognizant of standards of patient privacy and confidentiality that must be maintained in all environments, including online, and must refrain from posting identifiable patient information online.
• When using the Internet for social networking, physicians should use privacy settings to safeguard personal information and content to the extent possible, but should realize that privacy settings are not absolute and that once on the Internet, content is likely there permanently. Thus, physicians should routinely monitor their own Internet presence to ensure that the personal and professional information on their own sites and, to the extent possible, content posted about them by others, is accurate and appropriate.
• If they interact with patients on the Internet, physicians must maintain appropriate boundaries of the patient-physician relationship in accordance with professional ethical guidelines just, as they would in any other context.
• To maintain appropriate professional boundaries physicians should consider separating personal and professional content online.
• When physicians see content posted by colleagues that appears unprofessional they have a responsibility to bring that content to the attention of the individual, so that he or she can remove it and/or take other appropriate actions. If the behavior significantly violates professional norms and the individual does not take appropriate action to resolve the situation, the physician should report the matter to appropriate authorities.
• Physicians must recognize that actions online and content posted may negatively affect their reputations among patients and colleagues, may have consequences for their medical careers (particularly for physicians-in-training and medical students), and can undermine public trust in the medical profession.