What's up on the web - web sites on medicine and health

We end 1997 with a review of some of the year's most widely used sites in the health and benefits arena.

Medsite Publishing

General search engines can be frustrating to those scouting the web for specific information on medicine and health. Yahoo or Excite, for example, will suggest any site or category that relates to the search topic, with the keyword "cancer" eliciting matches dealing with the disease as well as the constellation and astrology predictions. In contrast, Medsite, a comprehensive medical search engine and web site, automatically eliminates any nonhealth-related find.

Each match found through a Medsite search comes with a brief synopsis of the site's contents, as well as a rating by medical and health professionals from a wide range of specialties. The experts, all Medsite staffers, score each site for content, quality, ease of use and design. The qualitative rating is depicted by a thermometer (with a high or low mercury reading) beside the synopsis. Top scorers - a.k.a. Hot Med Sites - are marked with an animated starburst as well.

Visitors to Medsite can also browse through the site's alphabetical topic listing. Depending on the category selected, the search engine will either drill down to more specific groupings and subcategories or report how many links it finds and begin retrieving the sites in batches of 10.

On-line chatrooms, which can be accessed by clicking on MedCHAT, are another valuable feature. Through Medsite's sponsored forums, visitors can participate in a wide range of discussions led by medical experts. Close to 1 million users visit Medsite each month. Join them at www.medsite.com.

Sachs Group

How consumers select health plans and their levels of satisfaction with their plans change as managed care penetration increases in their markets, according to a new report by the Sachs Group. Key findings from the report are available on this web site's A Bit of Sachs page. Also available is The HMO Honor Roll, an analysis by Sachs researchers of more than 215 health plans in 30 U.S. markets, The Honor Roll recognizes plans with superior value, medical care, plan services and network efficiency. Benefits managers will find analyses of the 13 winning plans as well as interviews with some of the plan managers.

Clicking on Market Profiles leads visitors to analyses of 27 markets across the country - each divided into sections such as inpatient and outpatient utilization, payer mix, personal health perception and overall plan satisfaction.

Other site features include reports of industry news, upcoming events, current and past issues of the company's quarterly newsletter, titled The Sachs Report, a list of available publications and links to other health-related web sites. The address is www.sachs.com.

BuyersZone

Created by the publishers of Business Consumer Guide, this site is aimed at small to mid-sized employers in the market for HMOs - or merely seeking information about them. By clicking on the Buyers Guide page, benefits managers can choose from a list of five categories: general information on HMOs, guidance on evaluating coverage, advice for rating physician quality, data on prices and tips for purchasing. By clicking on the Topic Listings, employers can change the focus of the information to PPOs or 401(k) plans.

Employers can also correspond with vendors in a low-pressure environment through the Vendor Expo page. Here, employers describe their specific needs via a brief on-line questionnaire. BuyersZone responds by having an appropriate vendor in the same geographic area contact the employer via e-mail.

Another valuable feature is the Q&A Center in the Buyers Forum. Here, visitors can ask questions about purchasing health care, share helpful pointers with other employers and read what other benefits managers have to say about the purchasing process. It's also worth a visit to the Resource Center for lists of publications, web sites and organizations that have additional information. It's probably not worth much time boning up on the Industry Lingo since the site offers only a handful of definitions. The address is www.buysmart.com/hmo.

InterStudy Publications

Cost is often the deciding factor in business and policy decisions, so InterStudy, a researcher and publisher of managed care data, has developed two new products to help determine the financial viability of health care initiatives. The organization's National HMO Financial Database and HMO State Financial Reports allow employers to research the fiscal activity and risk structure of health plans nationwide. The site provides highlights and samples of these products, most of which are quarterly and include a 21-page report delivered via diskette or e-mail.

Benefits managers who subscribe to the InterStudy service - for $500 to $3,000, depending on how many HMOs are in the regional database - can check on market share, utilization of hospitals and physicians by health plan and comparisons of the financial statements of various HMOs.

InterStudy's electronic resource library, available at its web site, is free - and full of information about the performance of HMOs and other managed care plans. Most of the findings come from InterStudy's research reports: The Competitive Edge, Metropolitan Statistical Area Profile Data, The Quality Edge and The HMO Census Survey.

Another valuable resource here is the InterStudy glossary. It defines more than 200 managed care terms - everything from accountable health care systems to subrogation. To learn more, visit www.hmodata.com.

New York Online Access to Health (NOAH)

Any employer with a culturally diverse workforce should take advantage of this award-winning site, which is geared toward relaying health-related information to populations that are commonly uninformed - socioeconomic and racial groups that have special health care needs, language barriers or difficulty reading. All the information at this site is available in English and Spanish, and may encourage employees to take a more active role in medical decision making.

Twelve organizations, including the March of Dimes, the National Cancer Institute and New York Hospital-Cornell Medical Center, provide extensive information on subjects as diverse as mental health, aging and heart disease. Clicking on a particular subject elicits a list of similar topics with relevant information, resources for further research and links to related sites.

Visitors who are unsure of where to look can use NOAH's search feature, which will look under any word or combination of words related to health topics to reveal up to 100 relevant matches. Clicking on What's New, another feature of this site, reveals recently added or updated information. Because the site is designed for the unsophisticated Internet user, an extensive help page explains how to use every page and tool offered here.

One additional feature: NOAH keeps a running list of the 15 most commonly read documents, allowing benefits managers to see which subjects consumers click on most often. October's most popular topics, for example, were eating disorders, pregnancy and bipolar disease. While the popularity rating draws from all the topics available at the site, NOAH will soon have the capability for users to determine the top 15 documents in a particular category. The address: www.noah.curry.edu.

The Henry J. Kaiser Family Foundation

Few people trust their employers to provide reliable information about health plan quality because "employers' main concern is saving money on health benefits." That's the finding of a survey by the Kaiser Family Foundation. Benefits managers can learn more about employees' views by clicking on the Health Policy page of the foundation's web site.

Another Kaiser study reveals that while many Americans think for-profit health care organizations are more efficient and provide better quality service, they consider for-profit hospitals, HMOs and other health plans to be less community-oriented and more costly than their not-for-profit counterparts.

Clicking on this site gives employers speedy access to survey results and press releases - the information goes on-line at the same time it is announced at briefings and press conferences. Visitors can also find information about a specific subject by using the Kaiser search engine to produce a list of foundation publications available on-line.

Other features include detailed Medicaid information from all 50 states, discussion group forums that operate like bulletin boards and an on-line registration that ensures visitors who leave their address of e-mail notification when a new publication is released. The Kaiser Family Foundation can be found at www.kff.org.

COPYRIGHT 1997 A Thomson Healthcare Company
COPYRIGHT 2004 Gale Group