LinkedIn content for healthcare websites

LinkedIn content that fits a healthcare site

LinkedIn rarely answers a patient's practical questions, like which insurance you take or when the next appointment is. It does serve two other audiences well: referring physicians and partners who want to see a clinician's training, research and roles, and candidates such as nurses, therapists and administrators who are weighing you as an employer.

• Provider bio pages: a clinician's profile card with headline, current role and experience.
• Board certifications and licenses: shown with the certifications widget if the clinician lists them under Licenses & certifications, with credential links where added.
• News and research pages: the organization's LinkedIn Page posts about new locations, service lines, publications and community events.
• Careers: clinical and non-clinical openings from the organization's Page; see the careers page use case.

HIPAA and patient information

HHS's Office for Civil Rights has settled several cases over patient information shared online, including providers that replied to negative online reviews with treatment details, and a provider that posted patient “success stories” with names, photos and treatment details on its website and social media without written authorizations. In that case, OCR said a valid, written HIPAA authorization is generally needed before a covered entity posts a patient's protected health information in a website testimonial or social media campaign.

A live feed can't tell a research announcement from a staff member's well-meant post about a patient's recovery. Embedding puts that post on your website, under your name.

• Use the organization's LinkedIn Page as the feed source rather than individual clinicians' feeds, so posts come from the team that already reviews public content.
• Turn reposts off, so a reshared post from staff or patients doesn't appear automatically.
• On service-line pages, use Selected posts (Pro and Essentials) so only reviewed posts appear.
• Read clinicians' recommendations before showing them. The widget shows every public recommendation on a profile, so hide any that mention someone's care on LinkedIn itself.
• Comments aren't shown: the feed displays reaction, comment and repost counts, not the comments, so patients' replies under a post stay on LinkedIn.

Staff endorsements and patient-facing pages

The FTC's Endorsement Guides apply to health marketing too. The FTC's FAQ says employees who promote their employer's products should disclose that relationship, and that listing the employer on their profile isn't enough. If you feature a staff member's post recommending a service, the connection should be clear.

Privacy teams also review every third-party embed on patient-facing pages. The widget sets no cookies and records only aggregated daily view and click counts, but the simplest rule is to keep it on provider, news and careers pages and off pages where patients log in, book or describe symptoms.

This is general information, not legal advice. Check with your privacy officer or compliance team before embedding.

A setup plan for a practice, clinic or health system

1. 1

   Single-physician practice

   Free covers one widget: the physician's profile card on the provider page. Pro (3 widgets, 2 sources) adds a certifications grid from the same profile and the practice Page's posts on the news page.

2. 2

   Group practice or clinic

   Essentials (5 widgets, 5 sources) fits the practice Page's posts feed and jobs list plus profile cards for three clinicians.

3. 3

   Hospital or health system

   Use Selected posts from the system's Page on service-line pages, a live feed on the newsroom once communications has approved it, and profile cards for department chiefs.