(0106) How Do Patients Find Doctors: The Role of Social Media Among Otolaryngology Patients

Introduction: The objective of this study was to determine how different domains of social media are used by otolaryngology patients to find new physicians.

Methods: A total of 428 otolaryngology patients were asked about their use of various social media domains (e.g. physician profile pages, patient support groups, neighborhood groups, advertisements) in comparison to traditional means for identifying new physicians, as well as their impressions of physicians who had presence in these social media domains. Associations were sought between patients’ demographic characteristics and domains of social media used to find new physicians.

Results: Of all participants, 21% were likely to use social media to find a new physician and social media presence was deemed more important than traditional advertisements (e.g. billboards, TV, or radio) in identifying a new physician. Potential patients were most likely to use physicians’ social media profile pages followed by recommendations from patient support groups. Gaining a positive impression of a physician from social media was most commonly from patient support groups (50%), followed by physician profile pages (41%). With high degrees of statistical significance, age, gender, race, and insurance status were associated with patients’ utilization of different domains of social media (physician profile pages, patient recommendations or advertisements) to find new physicians and with patients’ impressions of physicians (negative vs positive) based on their activity in these different domains.

Conclusions: Perspectives of patients who use social media to find physicians, in association with key demographic characteristics that have been characterized by our study, can help otolaryngologists to better curate social media content for patient recruitment.