More physicians are surfing the Web
Use of Internet is increasing dramatically
Physicians’ use of the Internet is growing exponentially, according to surveys by the VHA in Irving, TX, and the American Medical Association in Chicago.
VHA, a nationwide alliance of community-owned health care organizations, found that on-line access has more than doubled in the past year among the 16 hospital employee groups included in the survey. The greatest increase was among staff physicians, where Internet access jumped from 28% to 82% in the last 12 months. The majority of hospital staff and physicians — 80% or more in most cases — are now connected to the Internet, according to the survey.
The survey, conducted with more than 300 hospital executives, also shows the perceived importance of Internet services to support health care delivery and hospital operations. A total of 72% of those surveyed feel it is very or somewhat important that future information technology (IT) applications be Web-based, an increase of 24% over last year. Only 9% now see on-line capabilities as unimportant, compared to 21% in 1998.
This is the fourth consecutive year that VHA has surveyed its members and released data covering IT priorities and trends in the health care industry. Among the report’s other findings:
• Hospital chief information officers say their top operational priorities are introducing electronic medical records capability, connecting physicians to hospital IT systems, and integrating new and existing applications.
• Respondents say Y2K issues have largely been resolved, with 37% of the respondents expecting to have been totally compliant by year-end and 86% of the remainder expecting to resolve any issues within six months of the beginning of this year.
• Hospital systems plan to purchase a wide range of IT products during the next three years, with no single type of application being dominant. Inpatient point-of-care systems, enterprise master patient indexes, and enterprise scheduling systems are the most likely purchases during the next 12 months.
• On a longer-term basis of one to three years, clinical data repositories and physician linkage systems hold the highest potential for purchase by hospitals.
• The most common clinical IT applications installed or already purchased are for laboratory information (91%), pharmacy information (87 %), and radiology information (77 %).
• Lack of financial resources and time constraints, together with lack of staff expertise, are the greatest inhibitors to completing hospital IT priorities.
• Many organizations (45%) would consider outsourcing any information systems function. The most likely areas for outsourcing are help desk services, network design and management, Web page hosting, and billing services.
• Of organizations with public Web sites (80%), almost an equal division exists between those hosting their own Web site (52%) vs. outsourcing (48%). Of those without a Web site, more than half plan to develop one within the next year and 60% of those plan to outsource.
The nationwide survey was completed with 306 participants, consisting of chief information officers, chief nursing officers, chief medical officers, chief financial officers, and chief operating officers from 244 VHA member organizations.
A follow-up study of physician computer usage prepared by the AMA also found that the proportion of physicians using the Web has nearly doubled from 20% in 1997 to 37% in 1999.
Since it conducted its original 1997 benchmark study of Web usage among physicians in the United States, the AMA has found that the proportion of physicians who use a computer has remained virtually unchanged over the past two years at 41%.
However, the current study suggests that Web use will continue to increase among physicians in the short term. The AMA findings show that among physicians who use a computer but do not have access to the Web, 58% said they plan on acquiring access to the Web in the next six months.
Physicians have also made substantial efforts to promote their practices and provide patients with educational information by establishing either a practice or personal Web site. Since 1997, the presence of dedicated Web sites among physicians who use the Web has increased more than 62%.
Data from the 2000 AMA Study on Physicians’ Use of the World Wide Web was accumulated from 1,084 interviews with office-based physicians. Medical students and retired physicians were excluded from the random sample of physicians.
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