By CLICK Staff
NEW YORK—
The Pew Internet & American Life Project continues to explore the impact of digital in our culture, including those in the health care arena. A 2013 study, which contrasted results to an earlier one conducted in 2010, reflects some changes, particularly among those consumers/patients who are exploring health matters online and who have insurance benefits.
"We have been interested in the social aspect of online health resources since the very beginning of our project. In 2000, we asked people if they had emailed a doctor and if they participated in an online support group for people who shared the same health issues. As social tools proliferated, we adapted our survey questions to fit the current reality," the Peer-to-Peer Healthcare report said.
"Now, instead of naming certain websites or services, we describe an activity and track people's use of these resources over time. For example, in the current survey, we did not ask specifically about Facebook, instead focusing on more general social interaction which may take place on a variety of sites. We trust that people know what we mean when we ask if they have, for example, posted a health-related question online and we do not particularly need to know how or where they posted it."
The social life of health information is a steady presence in American life. As we noted above, one in four adults (24 percent) says that they turned to others who have the same health condition during their last bout with illness, essentially the same finding as in our 2010 survey. One in four internet users (26 percent) have read or watched someone else's experience about health or medical issues in the last 12 months. And 16 percent of internet users have gone online to find others who might share the same health concerns in the last year. We explored this phenomenon in greater depth in the 2011 report, Peer-to-Peer Healthcare.
Eleven percent of internet users say they have signed up to receive email updates or alerts about health or medical issues in the past year. Twelve percent of internet users have downloaded forms online or applied for health insurance online in the past year, including private insurance, Medicare, or Medicaid. Some of the most striking differences were between those who have health insurance and those who do not (see table below).
Eight percent of internet users say they have, in the past 12 months, posted a health-related question online or shared their own personal health experience online in any way. Of those:
- 40 percent say they posted comments or stories about personal health experiences
- 19 percent say they posted specific health questions
- 38 percent say they posted both
In addition, 78 percent of those who posted a comment, story, or question about their health say that they did so to reach a general audience of friends or other internet users. Eleven percent say they posted somewhere specifically to get feedback from a health professional. Four percent replied that they posted for both a general and a professional audience and 5 percent said neither of those choices fit.
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