Designing an online disclosure index for hospitals

Abstract

BackgroundThe websites of a hospital are an important tool for information dissemination among the health sector's stakeholders. There is a lack of empirical evidence on the quality of content, and communication shared through the websites of hospitals working in Pakistan; this study is a unique attempt to fill this research gap. MethodsThis study is an exploratory cross-sectional inquiry that uses monomethod to adopt inductive research methods to evaluate the websites of hospitals working in Pakistan; there are 1282 hospitals in Pakistan. Using stratified random sampling 127 hospitals, 18.1% (23) public and 81.9% (104) private, were sampled; 11 were from Islamabad, 59 from Punjab, 9 from KPK, and 25 from Sindh. The websites were analyzed in June 2018. Quality of websites was evaluated based on an index; the proposed index has two sub-indices, “Information Content” (C1), and “Communication & Traditional Transaction” (C1). We used frequency analysis, independent samples t-test for checking for existence of significant difference in the mean value of C1 and C2 across the public and private hospitals, and linear regression to explain the link between C1 and its potential correlates — ownership type, newspaper visibility, and location. ResultsScores on (C2) were better than scores on (C1); however, private hospitals surpass public hospitals on C1. Hospitals that were featured in newspapers, score better on C1, no significant differences were found in C2. Private hospitals score better on following indicators, background information, lab information, thematic service areas, annual report, information regarding diseases, date of last page update, testimonials, visiting hours, FAQs, test results, facility of websites translation, information about the list of registered insurance companies, research studies or link to educational material, list of departments, doctors' consultation fee, and duty hours of doctors & staff. The maximum possible score on C1 is 66; while the maximum achieved by the hospitals on C1 is 38. The maximum possible score on C2 is 51; while the maximum achieved by the hospitals on C1 is 44. There exist a significant difference between the mean score of C1 for public and private hospitals— the associated p-value was 0.001; the sample mean of C1 for public hospitals was 13.78, for private hospitals it was 17.06. No significant association was found between ownership type and mean score on C2. ConclusionsThe main objective of this study is to propose an index to monitor the online disclosure practices of hospitals. This study fills a pertinent void in literature; it has evaluated the websites of hospitals working in Pakistan. There is a need to improve the quality of these websites; private hospitals performed better, on C1. The role of newspaper visibility is significant in explaining the online disclosures.