Online palliative care and oncology patient education resources through Google: Do they meet national health literacy recommendations?

Prabhu, Arpan V.; Crihalmeanu, Tudor; Hansberry, David R.; Agarwal, Nitin; Gläser, Christine; Clump, David A.; Heron, Dwight E.; Beriwal, Sushil

doi:10.1016/j.prro.2017.01.013

Cited by 38 publications

(30 citation statements)

References 11 publications

Supporting

Mentioning

Contrasting

Unclassified

Order By: Relevance

“… 11 A similar problem has been identified regarding oncology and palliative care materials. 12 , 13 Similar trends are seen among the orthopaedic literature. 1 , 3 4 5 6 7 8 , 14…”

supporting

confidence: 64%

“…The discrepancy shown in this study between the reading level of patient education materials and the national recommendation is seen across many fields of medicine and indicates that changes need to be made to improve the patient's ability to understand the provided health information. 1 , 3 4 5 6 7 8 , 11 12 13 14 To improve the material analyzed in our study, we looked at the variables used to determine the readability of a document. Two variables that increase the reading grade level of a document are the percentage of long and complex words in the document.…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…These six readability tests were chosen because they have been previously used for the analysis of patient health education materials. 4 , 6 , 11 , 12 , 15 Table 1 shows the formula used by the software to make each calculation. 12 …”

Section: Methodsmentioning

confidence: 99%

See 2 more Smart Citations

Readability of Sports Injury and Prevention Patient Education Materials From the American Academy of Orthopaedic Surgeons Website

et al. 2018

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

Introduction:The purpose of this study is to evaluate the readability of 114 Sports Injury and Prevention patient education materials provided by the American Academy of Orthopaedic Surgeons (AAOS).Methods:We evaluated all articles written in English posted under the Sports Injury and Prevention section of the AAOS website using readability software to compute six readability scores, which we compared with the eighth-grade level using a two-tailed one-sample Student t-test.Results:The mean reading grade level calculated by each readability test was markedly higher than the eighth-grade level. We reported mean ± SD for each test: Flesch-Kincaid grade level (8.95 ± 1.51; P < 0.001), Simple Measure of Gobbledygook (11.53 ± 1.18; P < 0.001), Coleman-Liau index (11.16 ± 1.33; P < 0.001), Gunning Fog index (11.06 ± 1.63; P < 0.001), New Dale-Chall (9.49 ± 1.66; P < 0.001), and FORCAST formulas (10.96 ± 0.60; P < 0.001).Discussion:This study shows that patient education materials provided by the AAOS concerning sports injury and prevention are written at a readability level too high for patients to understand. On average, patient materials are written at least 2.5 grade levels higher than national recommendations. Only 7% of the 114 articles had readability scores in line with national recommendations. These findings indicate a need for revised patient education materials geared toward bringing the readability level down to the recommended eighth-grade level.

show abstract

“… 11 A similar problem has been identified regarding oncology and palliative care materials. 12 , 13 Similar trends are seen among the orthopaedic literature. 1 , 3 4 5 6 7 8 , 14…”

supporting

confidence: 64%

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

See 1 more Smart Citation

Readability of Sports Injury and Prevention Patient Education Materials From the American Academy of Orthopaedic Surgeons Website

et al. 2018

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

show abstract

“…However, in the modern era of technology’s expanding influence, there is much to be gained if ROs focus efforts toward establishing a stronger online presence. Creating and curating appropriate online information for patients may also contribute to greater patient-physician engagement [ 26 - 27 ].…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

What Do Patients Think About Their Radiation Oncologists? An Assessment of Online Patient Reviews on Healthgrades

Prabhu

Randhawa

Clump

et al. 2018

Cureus

Self Cite

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

IntroductionAn increasing number of patients search for their physicians online. Many hospital systems utilize Press-Ganey studies as internal tools to analyze patient satisfaction, but independent third-party websites have a large presence online. Patients’ trust in these third-party sites may occur despite a low number of reviews and a lack of validity of patients’ entries. Healthgrades.com has been shown as the most popular site to appear on Google searches for radiation oncologists (ROs) in the United States (US). The aim of this study was to analyze patient satisfaction scores and the factors that influence those scores for American ROs on Healthgrades.MethodsThe physician ratings website Healthgrades was manually queried to obtain reviews from all Medicare-participating ROs with reviews (n=2,679). Patient Review Satisfaction Scores (PRSS) were recorded in response to a variety of questions. All information in the survey was scored from 1 (poor) to 5 (excellent) for the following characteristics: likelihood to recommend (LTR), office environment, ease of scheduling, trust in the physician’s decision, staff friendliness, ability of the physician to listen and answer questions, ability of the physician to explain the condition, and whether the physician spent sufficient time with the patients. Associations amongst these factors were considered by computing Spearman correlation coefficients and utilizing Mann-Whitney and Kruskal-Wallis tests.ResultsThe ROs’ mean LTR score was 4.51±0.9 (median 5.0, 66% received the highest possible score of 5; 95% received a score>2). Patient reviews per RO ranged from 1 to 242 (4.50±0.9, median 2.0). LTR scores correlated very strongly with physician-related factors, ranging from r=0.85 (with appropriate time spent with patients) to r=0.89 (with level of trust in physician). LTR scores were not statistically significantly associated with gender, wait time, ROs’ years since graduation, academic status, or geographic region.ConclusionSatisfaction scores for ROs on a leading physician ratings website are very strong, and most patients leaving reviews are likely to recommend their own ROs to their friends and family. Understanding online ratings and identifying factors associated with positive ratings are important for both patients and ROs due to the recent growth in physician-rating third-party sites. ROs should have increased awareness regarding sites like Healthgrades and their online reputation.

show abstract

“…First, researchers are evaluating organic results displayed by search engines with tools that are widely used today such as HONcode [13], the Journal of the American Medical Association (JAMA) benchmarks, and the DISCERN tool [14], and scales such as Flesch-Kincaid reading level and Flesch reading ease [14]. Results from Google are downloaded and evaluated [16] with regard to how they answer health questions [17], for example, from parents on neonatal intensive care [18], or on palliative care [19] or human papillomavirus vaccination [20]; and there are large systematic reviews of autoimmune diseases [21]. Some studies have examined data retrieved from the Google Planner tool [22], which contains information on the popularity and competitiveness of all queries used on Google in the last 12 months [23], or built their own Google-based search engine for mining radiology reports [24].…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Google Medical Update: Why Is the Search Engine Decreasing Visibility of Health and Medical Information Websites?

Strzelecki

2020

IJERPH

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

The Google search engine answers many health and medical information queries every day. People have become used to searching for this type of information. This paper presents a study which examined the visibility of health and medical information websites. The purpose of this study was to find out why Google is decreasing the visibility of such websites and how to measure this decrease. Since August 2018, Google has been more rigorously rating these websites, since they can potentially impact people’s health. The method of the study was to collect data about the visibility of health and medical information websites in sequential time snapshots. Visibility consists of combined data of unique keywords, positions, and URL results. The sample under study was made up of 21 websites selected from 10 European countries. The findings reveal that in sequential time snapshots, search visibility decreased. The decrease was not dependent on the country or the language. The main reason why Google is decreasing the visibility of such websites is that they do not meet high ranking criteria.

show abstract

Online palliative care and oncology patient education resources through Google: Do they meet national health literacy recommendations?

Cited by 38 publications

References 11 publications

Readability of Sports Injury and Prevention Patient Education Materials From the American Academy of Orthopaedic Surgeons Website

Readability of Sports Injury and Prevention Patient Education Materials From the American Academy of Orthopaedic Surgeons Website

What Do Patients Think About Their Radiation Oncologists? An Assessment of Online Patient Reviews on Healthgrades

Google Medical Update: Why Is the Search Engine Decreasing Visibility of Health and Medical Information Websites?

Contact Info

Product

Resources

About