ABSTRACT
As the World Wide Web expands, hospitals are considering how they may benefit from establishing Web sites of their own. We examined the Web sites of 20 Canadian hospitals to identify and compare their features. We developed two instruments for this assessment: a quantitative Features Checklist containing 67 items and a qualitative Categorical Rating Scale using 15 dimensions. Two of us (O.G. and D.A.M.) assessed each site. At most sites the most fully implemented feature was the provision of basic contact information, although development was inconsistent. Few sites took full advantage of multimedia capabilities. There was a strong correlation (r = 0.82, P < 0.001) between the number of features observed at a site and its score on the Categorical Rating Scale.
