| Summary: | 碩士 === 國立臺灣大學 === 醫療機構管理研究所 === 89 === The purpose of this study was to investigate current status in building hospitals’ websites, and to identify related factors. Four hundreds and seventy four accredited hospitals in Taiwan were treated as census population. Data collection was applied by mailing questionnaire with 174 response hospitals,yielding a response rate of 37%. According to the responsed hospitals, we also collected data about hospitals’ characteristics, and use “Content Analysis” to evaluate hospitals’ websites contents. Furthermore, “Mystery Shopper” method was applied to measure how hospitals reply customers’ E-mail.
Major findings of this study are listed below:
(1)Building hospitals’ websites and resources investment
Among the responsed hospitals, 62.6% have their own websites in which all medical centers and regional hospitals have websites. Twenty two percent of responsed hospitals applied outsourcing the work for building websites where the main reasons included no computer/information department and for efficiency concern. Most of responsed hospitals agreed that applying internet technology can improve service quality and work efficiency . “Security” is the most important determinant in deciding whether to apply applying internet technology or not. More than 70 percent of hospitals agreed that internet will bring huge impacts on delivering medical services. Forty percent of hospitals agreed that people have increasing demand in hospitals’ internet services. Seventy percent of hospitals agree that hospitals’ top managers give highly support in applying internet.
The average cost for building websites was NT$900,000 and the median cost was NT$300,000. The mean and median cost of websites maintenance in the very last month before filling the questionnaire was NT30,000 and 10,000, respectively. The average cost of personnel was NT17,000 per month.
(2)Result of websites’ content analysis
Ninety percent of hospitals’ websites contained mailing address and contact phone
number. Nearly seventy percent of hospitals’ websites offering E-mail for communication purpose. Ninety-six percent of websites have brief introduction about hospitals in which most of them offer hospitals’ past history and mission statement. Regarding medical services information, more than ninety percent of hospitals provided schedule of ambulatory service while only forty-six percent of them offer online appointment service. There were few hospitals’ websites offering interactive functions such as medical consultant and guest book.
(3) The situation of hospitals processing customers’ e-mail
Less than a half of hospitals with e-mail account shown on websites replied our
“mystery shopper” e-mail where the average processing period took one to two working days before replying. All of the replied mails offered phone number for further request.
(4)Related factors of hospitals in applying websites
According to statistical analysis, we identified that some related factors in applying website while the results were not consistent. Thus, it still needs further study to identify the causal relationship between those factors such as hospitals’ characteristics, internal and external environmental factors, and the perception of benefit about applying wet-site technology, and how hospitals applying websites.
Based on the study results, we suggest that the government should first establish the rules and criteria for accreditation on medical related websites in order to help people obtain accurate health information and consulting services with better quality. Second, it is essential to take the level of applying website into concern in setting standard of hospital accreditation and offer incentives for hospitals to devote resources in internet services. Third, hospitals’ administrators should offer online appointment function on their websites, provide interaction between hospital and customer through website, and apply websites’ functional assessment regularly. Fourth, future research may use other survey method to collect data, in order to improve response rate and the representative of respondents. Fifth, creating qualitative checklist could serve as alternative approach in content analysis in assessing hospital websites. Finally, the mechanism of how factors affect hospitals applying websites and their causal relationship still needs further efforts for thorough elaboration.
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