Social media has proved to be a must-have tool in most industries. Organizations interact with target audiences using social media platforms, such as Facebook, MySpace and Twitter.

This trend is being used a bit differently in physician services as well as outsourced physician services. While many hospital physicians use social media tools to interact with one another, healthcare experts predict that the tool will play an increasing role in patient care management, especially with larger hospitals, academic medical centers, and pediatric facilities, in the near future.

According to an article featured in “InformationWeek Healthcare” larger hospitals are more likely to begin using it first because “they have large budgets and might need to spend more on legal resources to vet Facebook or Twitter entries.”

Like physicians using social media to correspond with colleagues, many patients also use social networking sites to interact with each other; they powerful platforms to deliver and receive healthcare information, especially for patients and caregivers who are increasingly going online to connect and share experiences with others with similar medical issues or concerns.

For the most part, healthcare experts agree that it’s just a matter of time before physician and patient interaction through social media becomes commonplace.

“More has changed in the past 18 months than the past 18 years,” said Liz Moench, President and CEO of MediciGlobal. “In this new environment ‘patient recruitment’ is becoming ‘patient engagement’ and healthcare groups must be comfortable with social media.”