Huerta Timothy R, Hefner Jennifer L, Ford Eric W, McAlearney Ann Scheck, Menachemi Nir
Departments of Family Medicine and Biomedical Informatics, College of Medicine, The Ohio State University, Columbus, OH, United States.
J Med Internet Res. 2014 Feb 25;16(2):e64. doi: 10.2196/jmir.3054.
Passage of the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act (ACA) increased the roles hospitals and health systems play in care delivery and led to a wave of consolidation of medical groups and hospitals. As such, the traditional patient interaction with an independent medical provider is becoming far less common, replaced by frequent interactions with integrated medical groups and health systems. It is thus increasingly important for these organizations to have an effective social media presence. Moreover, in the age of the informed consumer, patients desire a readily accessible, electronic interface to initiate contact, making a well-designed website and social media strategy critical features of the modern health care organization.
The purpose of this study was to assess the Web presence of hospitals and their health systems on five dimensions: accessibility, content, marketing, technology, and usability. In addition, an overall ranking was calculated to identify the top 100 hospital and health system websites.
A total of 2407 unique Web domains covering 2785 hospital facilities or their parent organizations were identified and matched against the 2009 American Hospital Association (AHA) Annual Survey. This is a four-fold improvement in prior research and represents what the authors believe to be a census assessment of the online presence of US hospitals and their health systems. Each of the five dimensions was investigated with an automated content analysis using a suite of tools. Scores on the dimensions are reported on a range from 0 to 10, with a higher score on any given dimension representing better comparative performance. Rankings on each dimension and an average ranking are provided for the top 100 hospitals.
The mean score on the usability dimension, meant to rate overall website quality, was 5.16 (SD 1.43), with the highest score of 8 shared by only 5 hospitals. Mean scores on other dimensions were between 4.43 (SD 2.19) and 6.49 (SD 0.96). Based on these scores, rank order calculations for the top 100 websites are presented. Additionally, a link to raw data, including AHA ID, is provided to enable researchers and practitioners the ability to further explore relationships to other dynamics in health care.
This census assessment of US hospitals and their health systems provides a clear indication of the state of the sector. While stakeholder engagement is core to most discussions of the role that hospitals must play in relation to communities, management of an online presence has not been recognized as a core competency fundamental to care delivery. Yet, social media management and network engagement are skills that exist at the confluence of marketing and technical prowess. This paper presents performance guidelines evaluated against best-demonstrated practice or independent standards to facilitate improvement of the sector's use of websites and social media.
《患者保护与平价医疗法案》（ACA）的通过增加了医院和医疗系统在医疗服务提供中所扮演的角色，并引发了医疗集团和医院的一轮整合浪潮。因此，患者与独立医疗服务提供者的传统互动变得越来越少见，取而代之的是与整合医疗集团和医疗系统的频繁互动。所以，这些组织拥有有效的社交媒体形象变得越来越重要。此外，在信息充分的消费者时代，患者希望有一个易于访问的电子界面来发起联系，这使得精心设计的网站和社交媒体策略成为现代医疗保健组织的关键特征。
本研究的目的是从五个维度评估医院及其医疗系统的网络形象：可访问性、内容、营销、技术和可用性。此外，还计算了一个总体排名，以确定排名前100的医院和医疗系统网站。
总共识别出2407个独特的网站域名，涵盖2785家医院设施或其母公司，并与2009年美国医院协会（AHA）年度调查进行匹配。这比之前的研究提高了四倍，作者认为这代表了对美国医院及其医疗系统在线形象的普查评估。使用一套工具通过自动内容分析对五个维度中的每一个进行了调查。各维度的得分在0到10分的范围内报告，任何给定维度上的得分越高代表比较表现越好。为排名前100的医院提供了每个维度的排名和平均排名。
用于评估网站整体质量的可用性维度的平均得分为5.16（标准差1.43），只有5家医院获得了最高的8分。其他维度的平均得分在4.43（标准差2.19）到6.49（标准差0.96）之间。基于这些得分，给出了排名前100的网站的排名计算结果。此外，还提供了包括AHA ID在内的原始数据链接，以使研究人员和从业者能够进一步探索与医疗保健中其他动态因素的关系。
对美国医院及其医疗系统的这次普查评估清楚地表明了该行业的状况。虽然利益相关者参与是大多数关于医院在社区中必须扮演的角色的讨论的核心，但在线形象的管理尚未被视为医疗服务提供的一项核心能力。然而，社交媒体管理和网络参与是营销和技术能力相结合的技能。本文提出了根据最佳实践或独立标准评估的绩效指南，以促进该行业对网站和社交媒体的使用的改进。
