Healthcare on Social Media: Building Trust in a Digital Age

Healthcare organizations have never had more opportunities to communicate directly with patients and the public. Social media allows clinicians to explain complex health topics in accessible language, organizations to respond to emerging concerns and healthcare leaders to build communities around prevention, wellness and better care.

But the opportunity comes with real challenges. A confusing post can undermine understanding. An unsupported claim can spread misinformation. A poorly handled patient story can compromise privacy. And when a false claim gains traction, a slow response can leave patients looking elsewhere for answers. A 2025 study of 3,805 U.S. adults found an association between perceived exposure to substantial health misinformation on social media and lower trust in the healthcare system.

The question for healthcare leaders, then, is not whether to engage on social media, but how to do so in a way that strengthens the patient experience and protects the trust on which effective care depends.

Members of the Senior Executive Healthcare Think Tank bring perspectives spanning patient experience, healthcare technology, telehealth, clinical systems, workforce health, health administration and responsible innovation. They examine how healthcare organizations can approach social media governance, empower clinicians to participate, reach the right audiences, verify health information and respond effectively when misinformation emerges.

“The goal is not to be everywhere, but to become a credible resource in a defined area—both digitally and in real life.”

– Eugene Zabolotsky, CEO of Health Helper

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Start With Expertise, Not Everywhere

For Eugene Zabolotsky, CEO of Health Helper, the most effective healthcare social media strategy begins with a clearly defined area of expertise.

“Healthcare professionals should use social media to share value-added information within their own specialty and expertise,” Zabolotsky says. “The goal is not to be everywhere, but to become a credible resource in a defined area—both digitally and in real life.”

That focus is particularly important for healthcare organizations trying to improve health literacy. Patients do not necessarily need more information; they need information they can understand, trust and act on.

“Organizations should support evidence-based content, transparency, privacy and responsible communication,” Zabolotsky says. “When qualified voices educate consistently and authentically, they build trust, strengthen credibility and help patients make better health decisions.”

Make Clinical Trust the Foundation

Asaad Hakeem of SARC MedIQ Inc. sees social media as something much more consequential than a marketing channel.

“Treat social media as an extension of clinical trust, not just marketing,” Hakeem says. “Educate with evidence, protect patient privacy, disclose conflicts and correct misinformation quickly.”

Hakeem recommends giving credible clinicians an active role while establishing clear institutional expectations.

“Empower credible clinicians to participate within clear guidelines,” he says. “The goal should be informed communities and trust, not simply reach or engagement.”

For leaders, this means reconsidering the metrics used to evaluate social media. Follower counts, impressions and clicks can indicate distribution, but they do not necessarily demonstrate improved understanding or better patient experiences.

The more meaningful questions are whether patients are finding reliable information, whether the organization is correcting misinformation effectively and whether its communications reinforce confidence in its expertise.

“Done right, it amplifies education and community; done poorly, it erodes the very trust healthcare depends on.”

– Jordan Henry, Founder and Chief AI Ethicist of Veritas AI Consulting

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Govern Social Media Like a Healthcare Function

Jordan Henry, Founder and Chief AI Ethicist of Veritas AI Consulting, believes social media deserves the same strategic discipline applied to other healthcare functions.

“Healthcare organizations should treat social media as a governed strategic channel, not an afterthought,” Henry says. “Establish clear policies, designate trained clinical voices, prioritize evidence-based content and monitor actively for misinformation while enforcing strict privacy rules.”

That governance should enable participation rather than create a maze of approvals.

“I advise leaders to invest in social media governance frameworks, empower credible experts rather than marketing teams alone, measure impact on public trust and health literacy—not just engagement metrics—and prepare crisis protocols,” Henry says.

Healthcare leaders need clear ownership, escalation procedures and standards for clinical review, but they also need enough flexibility to respond while a conversation is still relevant.

“Done right, it amplifies education and community; done poorly, it erodes the very trust healthcare depends on,” Henry says.

Connect Social Media to the Patient Experience

Vikas Gupta, Technical Manager at HCL America, believes social media is “a powerful extension of healthcare delivery and patient engagement.” 

“From my experience in virtual care and telehealth, it is most effective when used to educate, build trust and improve health literacy rather than simply promote services,” he says.

That perspective puts social media in a broader digital-health context. A patient who encounters a healthcare organization online may later use its telehealth service, patient portal or other digital tools. Consistency across those experiences can therefore influence how the organization is perceived.

“Healthcare organizations should establish strong governance, ensure clinical review of content, protect patient privacy and empower clinicians to share evidence-based information responsibly,” Gupta says.

His advice to leaders is to focus less on visibility and more on usefulness.

“My advice to healthcare leaders is to prioritize credibility over reach, focus on delivering value to patients and use social media as part of a broader digital health strategy that strengthens access, engagement and trust.”

Know Your Audience

Jason Foodman, Managing Director at Archetype Growth, argues that healthcare communication should begin with the audience rather than the platform.

“Social media communications about healthcare issues should be both precisely targeted and institutionally governed,” Foodman says.

He points to the goal of increasing childhood vaccination rates and decreasing vaccine hesitancy as an example. Research has found associations between mothers’ vaccine confidence and whether their children were fully vaccinated, suggesting that audience characteristics can matter when healthcare organizations design interventions.

“If that research holds true for the targeted population, then healthcare professionals should identify which social media channels are embraced by mothers of young children and target their strategy accordingly,” Foodman says.

The lesson extends beyond vaccination. Organizations should understand who needs the information, what barriers that audience faces and where people already seek answers.

“At the same time, social media communications should not be impulsive one-offs, but rather part of a carefully constructed institutional strategy that focuses on key messages, consistency and earned trust,” Foodman says.

“I would treat social media less as a marketing channel and more like a perimeter needing continuous monitoring.”

– Tirumala Ashish Kumar Manne, Principal Cloud Architect at Optum

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Listen Before You Respond

Tirumala Ashish Kumar Manne, Principal Cloud Architect at Optum, recommends approaching social media with a mindset more commonly associated with security and operational resilience.

“I would treat social media less as a marketing channel and more like a perimeter needing continuous monitoring—the posture security teams take toward real-time threats,” Manne says.

For healthcare organizations, that means listening can be as important as publishing.

“Misinformation spreads fastest in the hours before an organization knows a claim exists, so the highest leverage investment is not a stricter posting policy, but instead a listening function that catches emerging claims early and routes them to a clinician who can respond within hours, not days,” Manne says.

Manne also recommends establishing a trusted group of identifiable experts who can respond when an issue requires clinical context.

“Pair that with a small roster of named, credentialed voices the public can verify are real, and publish corrections with the same visibility the original claim received,” he says. “Privacy and compliance review stay nonnegotiable, but the speed of an accurate response is what protects trust once something starts to circulate.”

Make Accuracy Part of the Workflow

Dorothy Riviere, CEO and Founder of Work Resilience, observes that social content inevitably compresses complicated information.

“Every piece of health content has to be shortened for social media, and shortening real science is exactly where it can quietly become wrong or, just as often, easily misunderstood,” Riviere says.

That makes content review more than a final approval step. Accuracy has to be considered when information is translated from research or clinical expertise into a headline, caption, infographic or short video.

“Build verification into the content process itself, not just a policy layered on top,” Riviere says. “Every claim is traced to a real source.”

She recommends testing the final version from the patient’s perspective.

“Every shortened version should be tested against one question: Is this still true and still clear once someone actually reads it in 10 seconds and acts on it?”

Even technically accurate information can still fail if it is confusing, overly nuanced or easy to misinterpret.

“Trust is not maintained by saying ‘trust us,’” she says. “It is earned one accurate, useful post at a time, and lost the moment one does not hold up.”

Empower Clinicians With Guardrails

Mahendran Chinnaiah, Digital Healthcare Architect at a major U.S. healthcare and pharmacy services firm, believes organizations should resist two extremes: giving clinicians no guidance or preventing them from engaging altogether.

“Empower clinical voices within clear governance guardrails,” Chinnaiah says. “Healthcare organizations shouldn’t lock down social media or let staff post without guidance.”

Instead, leaders should provide clinicians with practical support.

“Treat clinicians as authentic trust vectors, backing them with clear compliance protocols and media training to share evidence-based education safely,” he says.

That can include clear rules for patient privacy, personal disclaimers and boundaries around individualized medical advice. It can also include curated content resources.

“Give clinicians quick access to peer-reviewed data so they can swiftly debunk health misinformation with accurate messaging,” Chinnaiah says.

The model recognizes an important workforce issue: Asking clinicians to become effective public educators without providing training, evidence resources or organizational support can create unnecessary risk and burnout. Giving them the right tools can make participation safer and more sustainable.

Match Oversight to the Patient Risk

Sriharsha Chavali, Engineering Lead at a leading national dental services organization, believes the answer to social media risk is not to eliminate participation. It is to build a governance model proportionate to the potential harm.

“Healthcare’s answer to social media risk cannot be silence,” Chavali says. “Avoiding engagement does not eliminate risk; it simply allows others to shape the narrative.”

He recommends differentiating routine health education from communications that could materially affect patients or the organization’s reputation.

“Not every post carries the same risk,” Chavali says. “Routine, evidence-based health education should operate within clear, pre-approved guardrails, while patient stories, clinical claims, emerging technologies and crisis responses require deeper cross-functional review.”

That approach can make organizations both safer and faster. When teams know in advance which categories require escalation, they do not have to reinvent the approval process for every post.

“Strong governance is therefore not about adding approvals,” Chavali says. “It is about matching oversight to risk, defining clear escalation paths and enabling timely decisions.”

That is ultimately the balance healthcare leaders should seek: enough structure to protect patients and the organization, but enough flexibility to participate meaningfully in public conversations.

A Smarter Approach to Social Media

• Build credibility around a defined area of expertise. Focus on value-added, evidence-based information within a specialty rather than trying to be everywhere.
• Treat social media as an extension of clinical trust. Prioritize evidence, privacy, conflict disclosure and rapid misinformation correction over reach or engagement.
• Build governance into the social media strategy. Healthcare needs clear policies, trained clinical voices, active misinformation monitoring, privacy protections and measures focused on trust and health literacy.
• Connect social media to the broader patient experience. Use social media to educate and engage patients as part of a broader digital health strategy, rather than simply promoting services.
• Target communications to the audiences that matter most. Use research and audience behavior to determine which platforms and messages are most appropriate for a specific healthcare goal.
• Create a social listening function that can respond quickly. Monitor for emerging misinformation and route significant claims to credentialed clinicians who can respond within hours.
• Verify health information before it reaches the audience. Trace every claim to a credible source and test shortened content to ensure it remains accurate and clear.
• Give clinicians guardrails and resources to participate. Leaders need clear boundaries around privacy and medical advice, media training and verified content banks that help clinicians communicate safely and effectively.
• Match governance to the level of risk. Allow routine, evidence-based education to operate within pre-approved guardrails while subjecting patient stories, clinical claims, emerging technologies and crisis communications to deeper review.

The Opportunity in the Noise

For a healthcare organization, success on social media doesn’t necessarily mean having the biggest following. Instead, it’s being the one patients recognize as the place to go when a claim needs checking, a complicated issue needs explaining or a confusing health story needs context. That kind of reputation is harder to measure than clicks, but far more valuable.

Social media is already part of the healthcare conversation. The choice for leaders is whether their organizations will help shape that conversation or leave the field to whoever happens to be loudest. The opportunity is to make credible healthcare expertise easier to find, easier to understand and harder to dismiss—and to make every post an opportunity to reinforce why patients should trust the people behind it.