On the heels of a report by Pew Research Center revealing
that 35 percent of Americans use the Internet to figure out a medical
condition, an independent survey finds that only one-third of physicians in
three American cities offer direct website help to health care consumers trying
to understand their symptoms.
In an analysis of 300 doctors with the highest
patient-satisfaction ratings in Boston, Denver and Portland, OR, the medical
marketing firm Vanguard Communications found 69 percent of the physicians have
websites.
However, only 33 percent of those doctors’ sites provided
much more than online biographies and general practice information – just 99
doctors have websites offering patient-centered information on medical
conditions and possible treatments.
The portion of physicians using their websites to update
patients on research and trends that could affect their health was even
smaller: only 4 percent (12 doctors) had made at least one blog posting in the
last year.
“Doctors in these cities are still using their websites
primarily as electronic brochures about their practices rather than as online
health resources,” said Ron Harman King, Vanguard CEO.
Doctors certainly have no legal or ethical obligation to do
any more, King noted, especially when online health encyclopedias abound on the
Internet. Nonetheless, offering more health information online could create a
win-win for providers.
Vanguard’s analysis spanned three medical specialties:
urologists, orthopedic surgeons, and obstetricians-gynecologists. To select the
physician sample, the firm chose doctors with the highest patient-satisfaction
ratings on HealthGrades.com, an Internet company that provides quality and
safety ratings of health providers. All 300 physicians had “100-percent patient
satisfaction” ratings.
More details of the survey are at
VanguardCommunications.net.
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