Friday, October 24, 2014

What do patients care about when they search for physicians?


How Are People Choosing a Doctor These Days? Who is using the online process?

  • 90% of people looking for health-care information go online first
  • These casual users read a couple reviews, give their doctors a thumb up or down, and move on in the search


How to choose a doctor


  1. Check your insurance: Search for doctors in your network
  2. Consider hospital affiliation
  3. Look for board certification: Doctors being certified through the American Board of Medical Specialties
  4. Watch out for red flags: someone who has had a lot of malpractice claims
  5. Consider compatibility: More than half of Americans focus on personality and relationship when choosing a physician
  6. Ask about drug reps: Many doctors let representatives from pharma­ceutical companies into their offices to pitch their drugs influence doctors choice of drugs
  7. Find out about office policies: how long it takes to make an appointment for a routine visit and how long patients are kept in the waiting room
  8. Scrutinize the staff: a staff that’s friendly, efficient, and respectful. 
  9. Factor in technology: Electronic health records, book and track doctor appointments


A 2014 survey from The Associated Press and the NORC Center for Public Affairs Research

http://www.apnorc.org/Pages/default.aspx

  • When it comes to defining provider quality, most Americans tend to focus on certain aspects of quality relating to doctor-patient interactions and doctors’ personality traits, rather than the effectiveness of the care provided or the patient’s own health outcomes.

  • Most people are not very confident they could find provider
    quality information they can trust on their own, including direct comparisons of physicians.
  • Americans report that they would trust word-of-mouth and personal recommendations from doctors far more than provider quality data coming from the government or third parties.
  • Getting information on the cost of provider care is even more challenging for Americans than finding information about provider quality.

 





 
Physician Marketing: How Do Patients Research Doctors and Procedures?


People are indeed using the internet to make decisions on procedures, choosing doctors and managing their diseases. 
80% of Internet Users Seek Online Health Information. 
48% said they search for online health information on behalf of someone else
36% said they use the Internet to look up health information for themselves
80% of internet users, or 59% of U.S. adults, look online for health information.
55% of internet users look online for information about a certain medical treatment or procedure.
47% of internet users look online for information about doctors or other health professionals.
57% of e-patients who say their most recent search had an impact on their own health care or the way they care for someone else.
38% of internet users look online for information about hospitals or other medical facilities.
41% of Americans are comfortable using websites to check health symptoms.
25% of people trust online symptom checkers, mobile apps and home-based vital sign monitors as much as they trust their doctor.

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