It’s Not My Whole Life, But…

Today we wrap up the discussion of the Kaiser Family Trust Study. You can get the whole report here.

We have seen that a substantial number of seniors have not used computers at all. The major reasons they report for this are that they never learned how (44%) and that “It’s too complicated (33%). And yet when they do go online, many of them use the Internet to look for information on healthcare. Then we discover that of all seniors, about half (46%), say they wouldn’t trust the Internet at all to provide accurate information. In some respects, this is business as normal since, as a group, seniors tend to be mistrusting of all media.

So when they go online to look for healthcare information, what happens? Well, first they get little if any encouragement or “pull” from physicians and healthcare providers. On the other hand, pharmaceutical companies are after senior business big time. I combined some statistics on page seven of the report to show that about eight times as many seniors have received advertising for drugs as have had any contact at all with a doctor or other provided over the Internet. And that only says whether they have had at least one contact. Some seniors (I’m one of them) get many advertisements for drugs - and I mean more than Viagra. So if we had some reasonable measure of the total number of communications with pharmaceuticals to compare with communications with providers, the ratios would be much higher than eight. It would likely be more than a hundred to one.

So with all this advertising, how many seniors actually buy drugs online? About 5% have purchased. If you have traced through the various numbers, this means that counting only those seniors who are online regularly, about 15% of them buy drugs online. The report doesn’t give us any handle to figure out how much business this is, but it has to be big - and rapidly growing!

The report is full of delightful paradoxes. Because one of the biggest businesses in the whole United States is Medicare. Medicare is critical to the overwhelming majority of seniors. If they used the Internet for any healthcare purpose, one would predict it would be to find information about Medicare. The results are different. Only about 6% have used it this way. That is about the same amount who buy drugs over the Internet. However, and this is extremely interesting, during the months over which the survey was conducted, the fraction of seniors looking for information on Medicare had a statistically significant increase! So maybe we are just starting to see a trend, or maybe the news of how the Bush administration intends to provide human services has raised the interest level.

Well, suppose we have some computer-literate seniors and they have been surfing for healthcare information on the Internet. Did it help them? Were they satisfied with the results?

Considering only those who go online regularly, 34% report they discussed their findings with a physician, and 23% say they changed their behavior because of information they found online. But the majority (53%) say the information they found online was “only a little help” or “no help at all.” Just 9% say it helped “a lot.”

So, given those results, you might think they are not getting a lot out of the Internet, but here is another zinger. A huge fraction (79%) of the users report they like being able to get information from alternate sources. They particularly like being able to get it quickly (74%). They feel more informed for having done it (62%).

On the other hand, substantial numbers (39%) find it frustrating to try getting the information they want. A similar number (37%) report it confuses them because there is so much information.

So there you have it. Many of my anecdotal conclusions have been borne out by this in-depth study, so naturally, I like it. But for those of us who have invested some time in trying to help seniors become computer literate, this study should be a real wake-up call. We are making a difference, but there is a lot more to do.

Okay, so we are fighting a war, and I know the tsunami victims need help. Our schools and our roads are in sad shape. In fact, much of the country’s infrastructure could use a healthy dose of new funding. So arguing for seniors who just want to know how to surf, enrich their lives with e-mail, and feel comfortable with computers is a tough job. If you want to walk away, there’s no shame in that, but I’m staying. It’s not my whole life, but it’s an important part of it.

For more in-depth tips on tutoring seniors, see the complete tutorial here. I also have posted a tutorial on elementary decision theory for those who might question a physician’s diagnosis (important for seniors) or anti-terrorist activities (important for everyone) but haven’t had the framework to analyze the data. That tutorial can be found here.