Sharing a link to Howard Luks’s blog post where he discusses the return on investment (ROI) on physician involvement in social media (SM). The post includes a brief video of Dr. Luks discussing his ROI from his active social media participation (he is @hjluks on Twitter, and runs his blog).
Physicians and medical practices may be reluctant to engage in SM if they do not believe there is going to be a tangible result from their efforts. Previous articles have suggested that the ROI from Twitter is likely to be very positive because of there is not much investment needed and hence any return would make the ROI look good. But Dr. Luks’s experience–which admittedly might not be typical–would make the ROI incredibly positive.
Dr. Luks notes that he had 14 patients in the last month who reported finding him via online resources. If we conservatively expect that the patients only come once and had a standard evaluation (which I’ll conservatively estimate at around $150 for a new patient consultation), the charges from these visits would be $2,100. If these patients end up requiring further care and additional visits (or if they require surgery or another procedure), then the return increases dramatically.
Maybe information of this sort will encourage health care providers and (maybe more importantly) medical practices and health care systems to consider engaging in SM. I already believe it will benefit their public relations and their communities; Dr. Luks shows it might also benefit their bottom lines.
Social Media Healthcare 
Mark the ROI incentive is a very positive approach to SM in HC and one that deserves further examination. I would offer a next step. What is the RO-SM (return on SM) once the patient is part of the practice. I would like to examine the patient comes in at a disease baseline. Can SM used with this same patient who entered via SM demonstrate a change in that baseline? This questions begs the need to identify outcomes of patients participating in SM with their physician.
I found the comment on Dr. Luk’s site from Dr. Onyeiji to particularly relevant to your point, Mark. He mentioned that he ws looking for a new dentist and when comparing two similar candidates, the deciding factor was whether either engaged in social media. The dentist with an active profile made the difference is gaining his business. This will likely be multiplied in future scenarios across the medical field.