Paul Levy, President and CEO of Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center in Boston, defends the use of social media by hospital employees in a recent post on his blog, Running a Hospital. The blog post was written in response to an email prohibiting the use of social networking sites in an unnamed Boston hospital. The email cites violation of the Hospital’s Electronic Communications policy and a potential HIPAA violation as the underlying factors for the decision.
For Levy, the benefits of social networking sites like Facebook and Twitter outweigh the potential violation of privacy rules—a risk that, according to Levy, accompanies any form of communication within a hospital. The following is an excerpt of Levy’s post titled Shutting Down Social Media? Not Here.
“… limiting people’s access to social media in the workplace will mainly inhibit the growth of community and discourage useful information sharing. It also creates a generational gap, in that Facebook, in particular, is often the medium of choice for people of a certain age. I often get many useful suggestions from staff in their 20’s and 30’s who tend not to use email.”