Is a physician-patient relationship formed when a doctor writes a blog or otherwise contributes to a social networking website? Sometimes. Simply publishing general information on the Internet is unlikely to give rise to such a relationship. But the waters get a little murky if you’re answering direct questions. This is why it’s important that such postings include a prominent disclaimer—something that indicates that the material on the site is for informational purposes only and isn’t intended as a substitute for an office visit, which would include professional medical advice, diagnosis, and treatment. If, for example, you write something in a blog and a person hundreds of miles away applies it to himself when he shouldn’t have, your disclaimer might be the only thing standing between you and a successful liability suit. That’s because it’s reasonable for a layperson to assume that as a physician you have superior knowledge about medical matters. Moreover, chances are that some of the more than 45 million uninsured in the United States are using the Internet as their primary means of getting medical advice. And while it may be easy to establish that no physician-patient relationship existed under current standards, liability may still attach if you don’t add a disclaimer or if the advice seems to be sufficiently self-contained and personally directed to make a reasonable person believe that they could ignore the disclaimer and utilize the advice as it stands. The situation becomes more complex when you answer questions from people with whom you indisputably have a physician-patient relationship. Hosting a MySpace, FaceBook, or other social networking page is probably an effective and efficient way to interact with the people who use it. However, if you do host a chat room or a social networking area specifically for your patients, it’s foreseeable that some, if not most, will feel that because you know them and have a relationship with them, they can depend upon your posted information. In fact, many courts would agree with this view: Since these people are your patients, communicating with them through a chat room wouldn’t be materially different from offering advice via e-mail. The best idea is to contact an attorney prior to engaging in this kind of activity.
Please click on the link below to read the Medical Economics article:
http://medicaleconomics.modernmedicine.com/memag/Medical+Malpractice%3A+Risk+Management/Giving-medical-advice-on-social-networking-sites/ArticleStandard/Article/detail/494100?contextCategoryId=43935
For more information on defending medical malpractice, nursing home and general liability matters in Florida contact Howard Citron at Citron & Associates, P.A. – www.citronlegal.com.
