An Effective Web Presence for Substance Abuse Treatment Facilities
BACKGROUND:
Website
development for health care has only been prevalent in the last two and a half
decades. The first websites were electronic versions of brochures providing
hardly any interaction with the consumer or potential consumer. The percentage
of consumers that use the internet during the decision-making process for
health care providers continues to rise. As a result, the websites of health
care providers are becoming more of a representation of the facility and creating
an organizational image rather than a brochure-like informational page.
OBJECTIVES:
The
purpose of this study was to analyze substance abuse treatment center's
websites in the State of California with the goal of informing the management
of substance abuse centers regarding an effective and inexpensive means to
closing the marketing gaps in the industry.
METHODS:
This
brief research report presents the results of employing an automated
web-crawler to assess website quality along five dimensions: accessibility,
content, marketing, technology, and usability score.
RESULTS:
The
sample mean scores for all dimensions were between 4 and 6 on a 10-point scale.
On average larger facilities had higher quality websites.
CONCLUSIONS:
The
low mean scores on these dimensions indicate that that substance abuse centers
have significant room for improvement of their website's. Efficiently spending
marketing funds to increase the effectiveness of a treatment center's website
can be a low cost way for even small facilities to increase market
competitiveness.
- 1 Department of Management , University of North Carolina at Greensboro , Greensboro , North Carolina , USA.
- 2 Department of Health Policy and Management , The George Washington University , Washington, DC , USA.
- 3 Family Medicine, The Ohio State University , Columbus , Ohio , USA.
- 4 Bloomberg School of Public Health, Johns Hopkins University , Baltimore , Maryland , USA.
- 5 Departments of Family Medicine and Biomedical Informatics , Ohio State University Medical Center , Columbus , Ohio , USA.
- Subst Use Misuse. 2016 Mar 24:1-4.
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