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What patients see online: assessing the online identities of Pennsylvania dermatologists
Katrice M Karanfilian, Eison De Guzman, Christopher Kim
1Department of Medicine, University of Pittsburgh Medical Center, Pittsburgh, PA Department of Radiation Oncology, UAMS Winthrop P. Rockefeller Cancer Institute, Little Rock, AR. AVPrabhu@uams.edu.
Introduction:
Patients use the internet to search for health-related information. We sought to characterize the information that patients find when searching for dermatologists on Google.
Methods:
The Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS) Physician Comparable Downloadable File was utilized to identify all Medicare-participating dermatologists practicing in Pennsylvania (PA). A custom Google-based search engine was used to search each dermatologist. Up to the top 10 results for each physician were then sorted into: (1) physician, hospital, or healthcare system, (2) third-party, (3) social media, (4) academic journal articles, or (5) other.
Results:
Within the CMS, 519 health care providers (53.9% male, 46.1% female) self-identified as dermatologists practicing in PA. At least one search result was obtained for each physician (4,963 total search results). About 30.6% (1,519) search results were hospital, health system, or physician-controlled websites, and 26.6% (1,318) were third-party websites (1,318; 26.6%). Social media websites accounted for 601 (12.1%) hits whereas peer-reviewed academic journal websites generated 135 (2.7%) results. One-way chi-square analysis showed domains were not randomly distributed across the five categories (P<0.0001).
Conclusion:
Dermatologists should be better aware of their digital presence and the strategies to better control their online identity.
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