Having just returned from Mayo where I could freely drink from the Social Media waters, it seems a letdown to return to my hospital  where access to Facebook, Twitter, Pinterest, Slideshare etc is blocked. Even email updates about our internal private Yammer network are filtered out by their spam filter.

At the recent Mayo Social Media Residency I shared my views with representatives from Lehigh Valley, City of Hope, American Acedemy of Orthopedic Surgeons, Baylor University, The Doctors Company, Sutter Health, the list goes on and on. They were amused about my system’s inability to embrace Social Media.

While the meeting was underway, we were broadcasting live Tweets, Blogs, and posting videos to social media sites. That is not possible where I work.

This is not likely to change soon.

At the Residency we were shown a video of a speech by Mayo’s CEO Dr. John Noseworthy who in 2009 exhorted the clinic to accelerate effective application of social media throughout Mayo Clinic. A year later the Mayo Clinic Center for Social Media was launched. The rest is history for all to see on the Internet, unless you are at my hospital (I attempted to look at the Slideshare Mayo Social Media history but my access was blocked).

My health system can and should do this. The change will have to bubble up from us minions at the bottom driven by progressive loss of our digital footprint to other more progressive health centers.

If we wait for the change to come from above, I fear I will then be closer to reaching Medicare eligibility.