Salt Lake City, UT– The ÐÇ¿Õ´«Ã½care Internet Hall of Fame will induct University of Utah ÐÇ¿Õ´«Ã½ Care (UUHC) into the ÐÇ¿Õ´«Ã½care Internet Hall of Fame Class of 2014. The award will be presented on November 4, 2014 at the 18th Annual ÐÇ¿Õ´«Ã½care Internet Conference in Scottsdale, AZ. University ÐÇ¿Õ´«Ã½ Care has been selected to receive an award for Innovative Provider Organization.
The award recognizes UUHC, which in 2012 became the first healthcare system in the country to post online physician reviews and comments. Analytics show this moved sparked Web traffic to increase dramatically. In March 2014, page views to physician profiles totaled 122,072 — a dramatic increase from the 32,144 page reviews tallied before the system's effort to publish online physician reviews and comments had been fully adopted. The surge in web traffic is a strong indicator that patients and consumers appreciate the transparency and additional information that online reviews can bring.
UUHC uses data from more than 40,000 patient surveys to rate its physicians on nine measures using a five-star system —similar to ranking systems used on consumer Web sites like Angie's List, Yelp and ÐÇ¿Õ´«Ã½grades. Patients are e-mailed an electronic survey within a few days following their medical appointment and are asked to complete questions about the care they received and are also allowed the opportunity to provide specific comments. Feedback is posted to the Web site, but is also used to improve all areas of patients' clinical experiences. More than 50,000 patients responded to the surveys in the first year.
Other healthcare systems across the country have consulted with UUHC about lessons learned while adapting their own respective models of online physician reviews and this achievement has been document by many news outlets, including The Economist, Becker's Hospital Review and Medpage Today.
"We're pleased that we've set the bar high and can serve as a model in the U.S. for how to post physician reviews online successfully," said Brian Gresh, senior director of interactive marketing and web at University of Utah ÐÇ¿Õ´«Ã½ Care. "It's exciting to be recognized along side other innovative teams."
About UUHC
University of Utah ÐÇ¿Õ´«Ã½ Care is the Intermountain West's only academic health care system, providing leading-edge and compassionate medicine for the people of Utah and a referral area encompassing five states and more than 10 percent of the continental United States. The health system includes ten community clinics and four hospitals – University of Utah Hospital; the University of Utah Orthopaedic Center; University Neuropsychiatric Institute; and Huntsman Cancer Hospital – with more than 1,300 physicians offering more than 150 medical specialties. For the past four years, University of Utah ÐÇ¿Õ´«Ã½ Care (UUHC) has ranked in the top 10 among all U.S. academic medical centers that participate in the rigorous University ÐÇ¿Õ´«Ã½System Consortium Quality and Accountability study. The University is also consistently ranked as among the country's best hospitals by U.S. News and World Report.
About the ÐÇ¿Õ´«Ã½care Internet Hall of Fame
The ÐÇ¿Õ´«Ã½care Internet Hall of Fame honors men, women and organizations that have made outstanding, long-lasting contributions to the healthcare Internet industry. The organization's purpose, while honoring innovation, is to ensure that the "history" of the industry is preserved for future generations new to the healthcare industry. The ÐÇ¿Õ´«Ã½care Internet Hall of Fame is an independent organization whose annual inductees are selected by an independent Board of Judges. For more information, please visit www.hihof.com.