The emergence of the new health care consumer - Part 1: Health Care Futures - Panel Discussion

Physician Executive,  May-June, 1998  by Robert P. Carlson

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The Physician Executive: How important is the Internet now in health and health care?

Holt: I've done some research on this and the answer is: Very, very important for a very, very few people. To give you an example, the Community Breast Health Project at Stanford Medical Center is very active on the Internet, tracking down different potential cures for breast cancer, patients and clinicians giving support to each other online in list-servs or in news groups. For some of the patients whom I've interviewed and had in focus groups, this is clearly a big part of their life and the major way they are focusing on their disease. For the rest of us, I don't think it makes that big an impact yet.

Rippen: Actually, it depends on what you mean by impact. If 25 percent of people over 16 are Internet users and if you believe the statistics that 43 percent of Internet users have retrieved medical information within the last year using specific health-type retrievers, and that three and one-half hours a month is the average Internet use but that health users access it every day, I agree that's a relatively small subset. This percentage is actually smaller than the percentage of physicians using the Internet,

With regard to the support function that the Internet plays, it can be extremely important for patients, for example, their chat rooms, especially with the chronic diseases that are difficult to cure, such as cancer. I know that many of you may have looked on the Internet for health information for loved ones that might have had a diagnosis. So I think for getting general information, it's fairly important, but as far as what does that have to do with impact on health, I don't think we have figured that out yet. There are a lot of people using it pretty intensively. The question is, relative to what and what's the impact. I'm not sure.

Weatherup: I think there are a fair number of both employers and health plans that are trying to harness the power of the Internet to replace some of the administrative functions and there's an opportunity for physicians to link into that. We're currently in a pilot right now, putting physician directories on the Internet for about 200 of the health plans that we participate in, The purpose is to help our enrollees identify physicians that participate in plans that we're telling them are good plans that are near them geographically and to provide information on the physicians beyond just what their name is, but also information on where they were trained, are they board certified, what gender, what languages do they speak, what office hours do they have. It's actually a key part of our strategy of helping people identify that managed care will work for them.

The Physician Executive: How is this qualitatively different from the more traditional approach of giving brochures to your employees?

Weatherup: We're attempting to integrate that information along with other consumer information. For instance, on the Web page where they can identify pediatricians in their area, there is also the option of reading an article about how to select a pediatrician. So, there's consumer education information integrated with a physician directory.