During the workday, you can find Dr. Michael Sevilla at the Family Practice Center of Salem. You can also find him on the World Wide Web.
"I do Twitter, and I do Facebook," Sevilla said. "I don't use that for patient care. I just use that for health information, like flu shots, if there's something in the news currently."
Now, his command of social media has attracted national attention. He's on the cover of Medical Economics magazine.
"I've seen that magazine before, and I thought it was going to be a small little picture," he said. "I was pleasantly surprised to see that it was the cover of the issue."
One common question he gets is whether it's OK to "friend" patients on Facebook. He says it can be. After all, doctors and patients have been friends in real life for years; however, he also says it hasn't been an issue.
"If go to the store, people are like, 'well, do you get questions about refill of medicines or colds or coughs or things like that?' In general I don't, and that applies to my social media life as well," Sevilla said.
A new study from the Pew Research Center shows finding health information is the No. 3 reason people use the Internet. Therefore, Sevilla thinks doctors should be aware of social media even if they don't participate.
"They don't have to be as crazy about it as I am in checking Facebook and Twitter all the time, but they should at least be familiar about it because they're going to ask them about information they found on the Internet," he said.
