Seal of approval for online health sites may be coming

An industry group proposes an accreditation program to help doctors and others know which health Web sites are reliable.

By Tyler Chin, amednews staff. Nov. 27, 2000.

The American Accreditation HealthCare Commission is developing an accreditation program for Internet health sites to help physicians and patients sort out the online wheat from the chaff.

In September, the Washington, D.C.-based organization, better known as URAC, appointed an advisory group to draft proposed accreditation standards for health sites. The proposed standards are scheduled to be released for public comment by year end and submitted to URAC's board of directors for approval by July 2001.

URAC, which is known for accrediting managed care organizations, believes its initiative is the first effort to create an accredited seal of approval for health sites, said Garry Carneal, URAC's president and CEO.

If the initiative is successful, it could help allay questions surrounding the reliability of the information on Internet health sites and how those sites protect their users' personal information.

Several sites received a black eye earlier this year when the California HealthCare Foundation published a report claiming that many sites weren't protecting users' privacy or complying with their own privacy policies.

Filling a void

Several entities this year have separately published codes of ethics for health sites. They include the Journal of the American Medical Association, the Internet Healthcare Coalition and Hi-Ethics or Health Internet Ethics. But there are questions surrounding these codes because their standards differ from each other, adoption is voluntary and there is no enforcement or third party to certify that the sites are complying with whatever code they adopt.

"A lot of ethical standards have been developed and URAC is trying to convert ethical standards into an accreditation program," Carneal said. "It will serve as the gold seal that people are actually walking the walk and not just talking the talk."

URAC's Health Web Site Advisory Committee is composed of 27 members representing a broad group of interested parties. JAMA, Hi-Ethics, IHC, Web-based companies and health information security experts are among them. The committee will be developing standards covering candor, honesty, quality, informed consent, privacy, professionalism and accountability.

"We need to find ways to improve the quality of medical information on the Web and give users the information about Web sites they need to make an informed choice," said Margaret Winker, MD, deputy editor of JAMA and a member of URAC's committee.

The committee also will consider what type of sites will be covered by the program and tailor the proposed standards accordingly, Carneal said.

For example, different standards would be applied to a health information site than a business-to-business health site. "If there's clinical content [on the site], there has to be clinical oversight and peer reviewing," he said.