COMPARATIVE WEBSITE CONTENT ANALYSIS IN ACCREDITED HOSPITALS

Introduction

Hospital websites can serve as a good medium for providing general information about a hospital's services and clinicians (1), as well as educating and informing patients, their families, and the general public about diseases, procedures, medications, and healthy lifestyles (2-4). Healthcare organizations and website developers ought to adhere to best practices in order to enhance their websites. This entails considering factors such as information quality, readability, objectivity, coverage, and currency, as well as optimizing the overall website design (5). The Turkish Health Services Quality and Accreditation Agency (TÜSKA) Hospital Kit, Corporate Communication chapter accredited by ISQua, has minimum criteria for the websites of the hospitals that want to be accredited. The aim of this study was to make comparative website content analysis and evaluations in hospitals accredited by the TÜSKA and to enable the development and improvement of criteria in this regard.

Methods

Content analysis of the websites of 12 hospitals accredited by TÜSKA was conducted over the following minimum topics, which should be included in the website of the SAS Hospital Kit Corporate Communications Unit:

Core policy and values

- Organizational structure

- The areas it serves

-Activities carried out within the scope of social   responsibility

- Human Resources

- Public relations activities

- Emergency services

- Making an appointment and giving results

- Communication and transportation

- Transportation to the service within the hospital

Results

Website Content analysis is given in table 1. According to the table, all of the hospitals included information on their websites in the areas of basic policies and values, service areas, human resources, public relations activities, appointment and giving results, communication and transportation, 8 of them were organizational structure, 8 of them were activities carried out within the scope of social responsibility, 11 one of  them provided easy access to emergency services and 5 of them about transportation to the service within the hospital. However, the areas with the least information on the web sites are access to services within the hospital, organizational structure, activities carried out within the scope of social responsibility, emergency services access.

Conclusion

In this study, in which comparative website content analysis of accredited hospitals is made, it can be said that hospitals have deficiencies in terms of access to services within the hospital, organizational structure, activities carried out within the scope of social responsibility and emergency.

According to this study, it has been revealed that it is important for the websites to meet the minimum requirements in order to create a positive public opinion towards the hospital and its activities in the target groups, to ensure the adoption of hospital policies and studies by establishing good relations, and to increase the efficiency. In this context, it is recommended that hospitals develop their websites in order to determine the target audience and communication strategies, to inform the target audience, to create a positive public opinion, and to monitor corporate communication and perception.

Table 1:Website Content analysis

 

References

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3. Schenker Y, London AJ. Risks of imbalanced information on US hospital websites. JAMA Intern Med. 2015;175:441–3.
4. Ow D, Wetherell D, Papa N, Bolton D, Lawrentschuk N. Patients’ perspectives of accessibility and digital delivery of factual content provided by official medical and surgical specialty society websites: a qualitative assessment. Interact J Med Res. 2015;4:e7.
5. Alhuwail D, AlMeraj Z, Boujarwah F. Evaluating hospital websites in Kuwait to improve consumer engagement and access to health information: a cross-sectional analytical study. BMC medical informatics and decision making. 2018 ;18:1-1.