Social media sites help patients make healthcare decisions

According to a survey by National Research Corp.’s Ticker, one in five Americans use social media as a source of healthcare information. The survey found that 94 percent of respondents have used Facebook for healthcare information, followed by YouTube (32 percent), Twitter and MySpace (18 percent), and FourSquare (2 percent). The survey also found that social media has an influence on future healthcare decisions for one in four respondents, and that hospital websites are the preferred source of online healthcare information. A separate study found that social media is being used by diabetes patients to advocate for bariatric surgery as a treatment for Type II diabetes. This has ultimately led to physician acceptance of the procedure.