Social media are increasingly becoming the predicate for lawsuits involving defamation and other allegations, in the world at large.  In health care, while there are risks associated with social media postings that are similar to commercial concerns, there is the extra problem of HIPAA violations.  We have advised clients regarding a range of social media based liabilities, including an employee posting a photo of her breakfast which sat on top of a patient's records, where the name and other identifying information could be easily read.   The risk of inadvertent violations of the law is relatively high in the absence of decent policies addressing the boundaries of social media usage by office staff.  How to utilize social media advantageously and whether physicians should even engage with patients through social media is a particular interest of Dan Shay's which he has addressed in his article "Physician use of social media: Navigating the risks"