PATIENT PERSPECTIVE ON HEALTHCARE FACILITIES WEBSITES COMMUNICATION ELEMENTS

Background. The evolving digital society stresses the importance of online health communication. The majority of studies observe digital communication from expert and legal but not patient perspectives. Purpose. To explore information and consumer preferences of the Russian Federation population on healthcare facilities websites. Materials and methods. The study involved 1319 respondents of the internet-based survey. Using a 5-point Likert-like scale, participants were asked to measure the importance of healthcare facilities website elements from 1 (“not important”) to 5 (“very important”). The analysis included the estimation of proportions of those who rated elements as important or somewhat important and following principal component analysis with varimax rotations. All analyses were carried out using IBM SPSS Statistics, version 26. Results. The greatest proportions of participants who reported the importance were observed in contact information (77.8%; 95% CI: 75.5–80.0%), testimonials (65.8%; 95% CI: 63.2–68.3%), information about staff (65.0%; 95% CI: 62.4–67.6%), website loading speed (64.6%; 95% CI: 62.0–67.1%), and its responsiveness (63.0%; 95% CI: 60.4–65.6%). Six factors were extracted, accounting for 43.3% of the total variance: (1) “general interest in information about a healthcare facility,” (2) “online services-seeking,” (3) “health publications-seeking,” (4) “visual appeal perception,” (5) “social vulnerability or health limitations,” and (6) “interest in healthcare facility public (non-medical) activity”. Conclusion. Healthcare facilities websites should provide information and functions not only based on existing legal acts requirements but based on patients’ preferences and needs.