Quality of Public Hospitals Websites: A Cross-Sectional Analytical Study in Iran

Abstract

Introduction:Nowadays, hospitals have turned increasingly towards the Internet and develop their own web presence. Hospital Websites could be operating as effective web resources of information and interactive communication mediums to enhance hospital services to the public.Aim:Therefore, the aim of this study was to assess the quality of websites in Tehran’s public hospitals.Material and methods:This cross-sectional analysis involved all public hospitals in Iran’s capital city, Tehran, with a working website or subsites between April and June, 2014 (N=59). The websites were evaluated using three validated instruments: a localized checklist, Google page rank, and the Alexa traffic ranking. The mentioned checklist consisted of 112 items divided into five sections: technical characteristics, hospital information and facilities, medical services, interactive on-line services and external activities. Data were analyzed using descriptive and analytical statistics.Results:The mean website evaluation score was 45.7 out of 224 for selected public hospitals. All the studied websites were in the weak category based on the earned quality scores. There was no statistically significant association between the website evaluation score with Google page rank (P=0.092), Alexa global traffic rank and Alexa traffic rank in Iran (P>0.05). The hospital websites had a lower quality score in the interactive online services and external activities criteria in comparing to other criteria. Due to the low quality level of the studied websites and the importance of hospital portals in providing information and services on the Internet, the authorities should do precise planning for the appreciable improvement in the quality of hospital websites.

Evaluating hospital websites in Kuwait to improve consumer engagement and access to health information: a cross-sectional analytical study

“…Many websites written at high readability levels. Salarvand et al [ 33 ] Iran Public hospitals 59 2016 Overall, low level quality of the websites evaluated. a Some studies were focused on general health information and were not specific to hospitals …”

“…The researchers followed analogous procedures employed by similar studies in analyzing the hospital websites [ 18 , 31 – 33 ]. Data collection about the websites began in April 2017 and took approximately 1 week to complete.…”

Assessing the Online Outpatient Booking System

“…In previous studies on quality assessment of websites of government (27) and private hospitals (31) in Iran, similar to the current study, a large number of hospitals were lacking websites in the "appointments registration system" in China (28), although the rapid growth of information technology in the field of health has revealed the increasing importance of hospital websites in providing information and services. Also, hospital websites are considered as an appropriate system for the exchange of information between patients and hospital care providers, while attracting more clients (27).…”

“…In a study on hospital websites of Iran University of Medical Sciences, the online appointment booking systems were average and weak in terms of being user-friendly and integrative (26). Also, in a study on the assessment of the quality of government hospitals' websites, the quality of these was reported at a low level (27).…”

Evaluating Hospital Websites in Kuwait to Improve Consumer Engagement and Access to Health Information: A Cross-Sectional Analytical Study (Preprint)

“…The researchers followed analogous procedures employed by similar studies in analyzing the hospital websites [18,[31][32][33]. Data collection about the websites began in April 2017 and took approximately 1 week to complete.…”