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U.S. Department of Health and Human Services Office of Disease Prevention and Health Promotion

Increase the proportion of adults who use IT to track health care data or communicate with providers — HC/HIT‑07 Data Methodology and Measurement

On this page:  About the National Data  |  Methodology  |  History

About the National Data

Data

Data Source:  Health Information National Trends Survey (HINTS), NIH/NCI

Baseline: 80.0 percent of adults aged 18 years and over used IT to track healthcare data or communicate with providers in 2017

Target: 87.3 percent

Numerator
Number of adults aged 18 years and over who have used a computer, smartphone, or other electronic means to do at least one of the following: 1) Looked for health or medical information for yourself; 2) Used e-mail or the Internet to communicate with a doctor or a doctor's office; 3) Made appointments with a health care provider; 4) Looked up test results in the past 12 months.
Denominator
Number of adults aged 18 years and over.
Target-setting method
Percentage point improvement
Target-setting method details
Percentage point improvement from the baseline using Cohen's h effect size of 0.20.
1
Target-setting method justification
Trend data were not available for this objective. A percentage point improvement was calculated using Cohen's h effect size of 0.2. This method was used because many factors affect access to health information technology (HIT), and these may increase the proportion of persons who use HIT to track healthcare data or communicate with providers.

Methodology

Questions used to obtain the national baseline data

(For additional information, please visit the data source page linked above.)

From the 2017 Health Information National Trends Survey:

Numerator:
In the past 12 months, have you used a computer, smartphone, or other electronic means to do any of the following?

Looked for health or medical information for yourself?

  1. Yes
  2. No

Used e-mail or the internet to communicate with a doctor or a doctor's office?

  1. Yes
  2. No

Made appointments with a health care provider?

  1. Yes
  2. No

Look up test results?

  1. Yes
  2. No

Methodology notes

HINTS is an annual, cross-sectional survey of a nationally-representative sample of American adults that is used to assess the impact of the health information environment.

History

Comparable HP2020 objective
Modified, which includes core objectives that are continuing from Healthy People 2020 but underwent a change in measurement.
Changes between HP2020 and HP2030
This objective differs from the related Healthy People 2020 objectives in that it is a composite of objective HC/HIT-5.1, which tracked persons who use the Internet to keep track of personal health information, and HC/HIT-5.2, which tracked persons who use the Internet to communicate with their health provider. This objective tracks persons who use the Internet to keep track of personal health information OR communicate with their health care provider.

1. Effect size h=0.2 was chosen to correspond with 20% improvement from a baseline of 50%.