Table 3.

Comparison of health care professionals’ and consumers’ primary purposes for visits to public reports and overall website experiences.

Survey topics		Consumers	Health care professionals
Primary purpose, n (%) a
	Choose or compare providersb	108 (25.3)	168 (38.8)
	Find quality information on a specific providerc	117 (27.4)	88 (20.3)
	Cost information	11 (2.6)	4 (0.9)
	Referral to another provider	—h	18 (4.2)
	Get practical informationd	25 (5.9)	20 (4.6)
	General interest in website content	10 (2.3)	26 (6.0)
	Othere	68 (15.9)	52 (12.0)
	No answer	88 (20.6)	57 (13.2)
Overall website experience,f mean (SD)		6.2 (2.7)	7.2 (2.2)
Additional content endorsed, g n (%)
	Measures about other diagnoses, relevant to their condition	161 (36.4)	—i
	Patient comments	139 (31.5)	—i
	Practical informationd	48 (10.9)	—i
	Additional providers	45 (10.2)	43 (9.9)
	Costs	92 (20.8)	115 (26.6)
Additional measures, n (%)		—h	99 (22.9)
	More methods (eg, risk adjustment model)	—h	113 (26.1)
	More detailed results (eg, 95% CIs)	—h	112 (25.9)
	Physician-level data	—h	81 (18.7)

^a P<.001 for differences between categories of Primary purpose by persona. Consumers n=427; health care professionals n=433.

^b This could be choosing a provider for oneself or a friend or family member. For providers, this included comparing oneself to other providers.

^c For providers, this included looking at one’s own performance only.

^d For example: address, hours of operation, services available.

^e Only 2.1% (7/427) of consumers chose the primary purpose of “learn about a disease” and so it was included in “other.”

^f P<.001 for difference in overall experience on website between health care professionals and consumers. Consumers: n=697; health care professionals: n=499.

^g Respondents could choose more than 1 answer leading to total percentages >100%. Consumers: n=442.

^h These options not presented to consumers.

ⁱ These options not presented to health care professionals.