Valuable Information

Web Sites Can Provide Valuable Health Information, But Surf with Caution

Today’s employee is expected to be a savvy consumer of health care services. Changes in health plan designs that shift more costs to employees compel thoughtful consideration of how to spend health care dollars. Furthermore, with the growth in popularity of health reimbursement accounts (HRAs), medical savings accounts (MSAs), and health saving accounts (HSAs), the prospect of rolling over unused account funds for future years provides an added motivation to be a careful consumer of health care services.

Knowledge is key to educated consumerism. Short of a visit to a physician, where can one go to learn more about a specific medical condition, a particular prescription drug, or the treatment for a certain disease? Because it provides a universe of information at the fingertips, the Internet has the potential to be a prime source to fill this need. According to the Internet Healthcare Coalition, an organization that promotes the use of the Internet to deliver high quality health care information and services, the number of Web sites on health-related subjects exceeds 20,000. But, as we all know, quantity does not necessarily equal quality, which leads to the question of how good, reliable and accurate is the Internet as a source of health care information?

At the request of the California HealthCare Foundation, RAND Corporation undertook a study to describe and evaluate health information on the Internet. The study focused on four conditions: breast cancer, childhood asthma, depression, and obesity. Clinical experts assessed Web sites to see whether they provided the kind of information patients with these conditions, and their families, would seek out.

Initially, the RAND report cites a Harris survey that found that 97 million adults have used the Internet to find information on health issues, and that about 70% of people who used the Web for this purpose say the information they found online influenced a treatment decision. However, the RAND panelists concluded that the sites they examined were not always efficient tools for evaluating health information on a particular topic; that the information found in response to specific searches was frequently incomplete (though generally accurate); that content typically was written at too high a reading level for most consumers; and that ads and promotions littered the Web sites.

Based on recommendations in the RAND report, tips from the Internet Healthcare Coalition, and other sources, the following few suggestions can improve the chances that an Internet search for health information will yield quality results—

• Allow plenty of time for a search. The approximately 20,000 health-related Web sites translate into hundreds of thousands of web pages. It can be time-consuming just to find what one is looking for.
• Check what is found on one site with information on similar sites. Given the number of Web sites, information found in only one place should be viewed with caution.
• Consider the source…after making sure that the source is identified. Anyone with some basic Web-development knowledge can create a site. Information on sites maintained by organizations or facilities in the health care field, nonprofits dedicated to specific diseases (such as the American Heart Association), or government agencies inherently carry a higher level of trustworthiness. Sites maintained by organizations without such credentials can, of course, provide accurate, reliable information, but make sure the site identifies where (or who) the information is coming from. (One government site, healthfinder®, www.healthfinder.gov, developed by the Department of Health and Human Services, links to the Web sites of more than 1,700 selected health-related organizations. It also contains health information organized alphabetically A-Z, and by group (e.g., children’s issues, women’s issues, etc). This site contains no ads or paid content or links).
• Some Web sites are maintained for commercial purposes. While the information found on such sites may be accurate, remember that the site was created with the intent of selling something.
• Make sure the information is timely. Look for a posting date, and if there isn’t one, try to verify that the information is still up-to-date by searching other sites.
• Remember that the information found on the Internet is no substitute for a personalized consultation with a physician. It can, however, make one better prepared to ask a physician good questions and more clearly understand what the physician says.