Healthcare CIO: Final Report

Nearly all respondents said their organization has a Web site, up from 94 percent in 2002. Marketing/promotion of the organization remains the No. 1 Web site use reported (98 percent). Employee recruitment and use of online physician and provider directories round out the top three, offered by 91 and 79 percent of respondents, respectively. Some 78 percent of respondents also say their organizations are providing consumer health information on their Web sites.

Promoting the organization and marketing is predicted to continue to be the top area of Web site utilization in the next two years, cited by 80 percent of respondents. Rounding out the top three are employee recruitment (78 percent) and providing consumer health information (77 percent).

Consumers should benefit from even more functionality in the next two years, according to survey respondents. Some 39 percent of respondents indicated that their organizations would give patients secure and authenticated online access to medical records in two years; only two percent of organizations currently do so. Additionally, according to respondents the number of Web sites that will provide patients with health assessment tools is expected to more than double in the next two years (27 percent currently, increasing to 60 percent in two years).

Nearly 91 percent of healthcare IT executives responding to the survey indicate that their organization has an intranet. The most popular use for an intranet is posting policies and procedures, cited by 84 percent of respondents. Rounding out the top three are the availability of resource tools, such as Micromedex (70 percent) and providing access to patient clinical information, such as lab results and vital signs (44 percent).

According to respondents, these uses also comprise the top three ways in which an intranet will be used in the future. However, only the provision of access to patient clinical information will increase, rising from a current utilization rate of 44 percent to a projected rate of 61 percent. Also increasing is the number of organizations that indicate that expect to use their intranet for supply purchasing (37 percent current use it for that purpose, compared to 58 percent who expect to use it in that way).