Dental Websites as New Media Tools for Patients in Dental Health Tourism

Introduction: Nowadays, potential patients surf the internet to check the websites of health care organizations to select the most suitable health organization for their needs within the perspective of health tourism. To this effect, dental health tourism as a subset of health tourism is considered to be a developing sector.

Aim: The aim of the study was to assess whether websites are effectively used as media tools by dental health care organizations, which serve as currently active as well as promising components of health tourism in Turkey.

Methods: In this cross-sectional study, 555 websites of dental health care organizations were examined. Web pages were evaluated by using E-Information Quality Scale of the Health Centre. A low score indicates well-designed websites.

Results: Scores related to "contact information" and "website layout" were lower in the private ones (n:146) than the public institutions (n:409)(p=0.000, p=0.011). It was observed that 80.8% (n:122) of the websites with foreign language options (n:151), were private institutions); whereas, public institutions only constitute 19.2% (n:29) of the total. All sub-group scores in the scale were lower in the organizations offering foreign language alternatives in contrast to the ones without foreign language options (p<0.05).

Conclusion: In private dental health care organizations," contact information" and "website layout" of websites were observed to be the most prominent features in the conduct of public relations activities. Websites with foreign language alternatives were well-designed due to the fact that language options were considered to be an incentive for the health tourists.