By Evan Falchuk

Last night, I saw a commercial produced by the federal government.  Called “Questions are the Answer,” it’s a call for patients to be engaged in their medical care, to ask questions of their doctors in order to be sure of their medical condition.

The commercial was excellent – it showed a man asking dozens of increasingly arcane questions about a cell phone he was thinking of buying.  Then, it showed him in his doctor’s office, apparently after getting a diagnosis.  “Do you have any questions?” the doctor asks.  “Nope,” says the man.

The government agency that produced the commercial is the Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality.  There are a series of other videos and tools that can help you be a better, more informed consumer if you get sick.

The only catch:  it’s almost impossible to find any of this great material.  The front page of their web site – if you should somehow manage to find it – is an enormous list of bullets and subcategories.  There’s a good consumer-oriented video on the right side (featuring Fran Drescher), but the screen is quite literally smaller than a postage stamp.

Those excellent TV ads?  Hidden several clicks away from the front page.  And what’s worse, you can’t embed or share them, they seem to only be available to watch locally.  In other words, all this good work is going to waste.  From a social media perspective, this most effective part of AHRQ’s web site pretty much doesn’t exist.  I noted this back in May, and it’s unchanged since then.

But the AHRQ should know: it’s never too late to get involved in social media.  Please, re-think your web site and get a social media strategy.  It’s never to late to get this important message out there.