You have probably seen him without knowing the name. Dr. Mikhail Varshavski, better known online as Dr. Mike, is a board certified family medicine physician in New York who started posting honest, plain spoken health content. No white coat theatrics, no fear mongering. Just a real doctor explaining real things. Today he reaches tens of millions of people across YouTube, Instagram and TikTok, and he still sees patients.
Here is the part that matters for your practice. People do not follow Dr. Mike because of a clever ad. They follow him because he answers the questions they were too embarrassed or too rushed to ask in an exam room. He built trust at a scale no billboard could buy. And trust, in healthcare, is the whole ballgame.
The lesson is not that every doctor should chase millions of followers. It is that the trust Dr. Mike earns online is the exact same trust your local patients are looking for when they pick a practice. The only question is whether they find it on your profile, or on someone else's.
Your patients are already deciding online, before they call
The way patients choose a doctor changed years ago, and a lot of practices missed it. According to the Pew Research Center, the vast majority of US adults are online daily, and looking up health information is one of the most common things they do there. Before a new patient ever dials your number, they have usually searched your name, read a few reviews, and glanced at your social profiles.
So picture the choice they are making. Two practices, same distance, same insurance. One has an Instagram that has not posted since 2022 and a Facebook page that looks abandoned. The other posts short, friendly clips: what to expect at a first visit, a quick myth busted, a thirty second hello from the doctor. Which one feels safer? Which one already feels like a real human you could trust with your health?
An empty or stale profile is not neutral. It reads as a closed sign. A patient cannot tell the difference between a practice that chooses not to post and a practice that is barely hanging on. Either way, they scroll to the next option.
What social media actually does for a practice
This is not about going viral. For a normal healthcare practice, social media does three concrete jobs, and all three end in booked appointments.
1. It builds trust before the first call
When a patient has watched you explain a procedure, seen your team, and heard your voice, they arrive already comfortable. That warmth shortens the distance between finding you and booking you. A patient who trusts you in advance does not shop around as hard, and shows up to the appointment more relaxed.
2. It makes you visible where patients are looking
Active profiles and fresh content feed your local search presence and your reviews, the signals that decide who shows up first when someone searches a doctor near them. They increasingly feed AI answers too. We dug into that shift in how AI is changing patient acquisition in 2026. The short version: tools like Google and AI assistants favor practices that look active and well reviewed.
3. It turns happy patients into your marketing
Good content gets shared, tagged and saved. A patient who loves a clear explainer you posted sends it to a friend with the same problem. That friend is now a warm lead who found you through someone they trust. No ad spend required.
What to post, in plain terms
The reason most doctors freeze is they think social media means dancing on TikTok or becoming an influencer. It does not. The content that works for a healthcare practice is almost boringly simple, and that is the point.
- Answer the questions you hear every day. Whatever patients ask you in the chair, they are typing into a search bar at midnight. A thirty second answer on camera is gold.
- Bust one common myth. Clear, calm, factual. This is the lane Dr. Mike owns, and patients love it.
- Show what a visit feels like. A quick walkthrough of the office and the first appointment removes fear, which is the number one reason people delay care.
- Introduce the humans. A hello from the doctor and a few words from the front desk make a practice feel like a place, not a phone number.
- Share a real win. With consent, a happy patient story or a before and after, done tastefully, is the most persuasive thing you can post.
Notice what is missing: hard selling. Patients can smell a sales pitch, and they unfollow it. Teach first, and the booking takes care of itself.
One rule you cannot skip: privacy
Being on social media is safe. Being careless with patient information is not. Never post a patient's details or photo without written consent, keep clinical claims accurate, and follow HIPAA. General education about conditions and treatments is completely fine and is most of what you will ever post. A healthcare focused partner keeps these lines clear so you get the reach without the risk.
The real reason doctors do not post: time
Let me be honest about the actual obstacle. It is not that doctors do not see the value. It is that a physician with a full schedule cannot also become a video editor, a copywriter and a community manager at 9pm. We had a pediatrician tell us last spring that she had filmed a dozen great clips on her phone months earlier, and every one of them was still sitting in her camera roll because she never had a free hour to edit and post them.
That is the trap. Good intentions, zero bandwidth. And it is exactly the part that should not land on the doctor at all. The only thing that genuinely needs you is the thirty seconds of talking to a camera. Everything after that, the editing, the captions, the posting schedule, the replies, is work a partner should carry.
How EtherealMinds runs social media for healthcare practices
This is the only thing we do, and we do it only for US healthcare practices. With our social media management for healthcare, you talk to a camera for an hour every couple of weeks, planned around the questions your patients actually ask, and we handle the rest. We edit, write the captions, schedule everything, keep it HIPAA aware, and manage the comments and messages so nothing slips.
And because a follower is only worth something if they can become a patient, we connect the content to the booking. When someone messages your page at 11pm asking if you take their insurance, our AI receptionist answers instantly and books them in, so the trust you built on camera turns into a real appointment instead of an unread DM. It all sits inside the same patient acquisition system: content that builds trust, a fast site that converts, and an assistant that never misses a lead. If you want the social profiles to actually look the part, our healthcare websites give every click a fast, modern place to land.
Dr. Mike proved the demand: patients are hungry for a doctor who will simply talk to them like a person. You do not need millions of followers to win from that. You need the few hundred people in your own town to find you, trust you, and book. That is a very achievable thing, and it is what we build.
Make your practice the one patients trust online
Book a free strategy call. We will look at how your practice shows up on social and search today, and map the simplest content plan that turns followers into booked patients, without adding hours to your week.
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