What should have been an innocuous conversation between a CIO and CEO at a health IT conference turned into a bit of a Twitterstorm over, well, Twitter.
Mark Barner (@mark_barner), CIO of Acension, spoke publicly at HIMSS16 with Michael Dell, Founder of Dell Computers, and said that he doesn’t care about patient complaints made on Twitter.
Covering the event was Neil Versel (@nversel) of MedCityNews who live Tweeted the remark.
“[Barner] doesn’t care about patients going on Twitter to complain about problems with such banalities as hospital food or parking at Ascension facilities,” said Versel in his aftermath article on MedCityNews.
InboundMD chimed in because we believe that marketing your medical practice on social media is important:
.@nversel @mark_barner will when it starts to hit the bottom line. #patientsfirst #HIMSS16
— InboundMD (@InboundMD) March 1, 2016
It’s possible that Barner is so in tune with his organization’s health analytics that he knows for a fact that Twitter complaints don’t have an affect on business and reputation management.
Many HIMSS attendees and followers disagreed as Vesel explained, “Not one of my previous 6,900 tweets has been “liked” or retweeted as much as this one.”
Barner later offered this follow-up response:
All patient complaints matter, but as CIO I focus on tech complaints. Could’ve done a better job of explaining myself. Lesson learned.
— Mark D Barner (@mark_barner) March 1, 2016
So there you have it, social media is an important platform for patients and providers.
And if you like Twitter as much as we do, here’s a list of 22 Twitter accounts that surgeons should follow.
