Abstract:

Introduction:
Puerto Rico is an island located in the Caribbean Sea, the smallest of the four Greater Antilles. From its discovery until the end of the 19th century, Spanish influence dominated our language, music, literature, gastronomy, customs, laws and architecture. For the last one-hundred eleven (111) years, American presence on the island has been increasingly reflected in our economy, politics, music, food, laws and language. The Puerto Rico Health Department has been responsible for the health of the Puerto Rican population since the beginning of the 20th century. However, in 1993 a healthcare reform overhauled the system by privatizing healthcare services. The island’s primary care centers and hospitals were sold to private entities.

The healthcare industry is in a constant search for ways to attract patients to their institutions. The use of the Internets sites have served as a mean for users to obtain health information. In its pages hospitals seek to have a patient relationship by providing information about their facilities, doctors, education and other relevant health issues. At present there are 68 hospitals in Puerto Rico.

Purpose:
The purpose of this study is to identify the number of hospitals that have a webpage and also those hospitals that use social media link to their webpage.

Methodology:
The sampling frame for this study was all hospital identified in the Hospital Registry and Other Healthcare Facilities (2014) from the Puerto Rico Health Department.
The sample represented 68 hospitals; a simple random sample of 23 hospital websites was performed focused on advertisement and social media content. The hospitals were divided between private for profit, private non-for profit and public hospitals. Hospitals webpages were examined for content, patient education, type of institution, clinical services, facilities and amenities, condition and treatments, news and events, career opportunities, link to Facebook, Twitter, YouTube and patient and visitor information. We assessed each as a binary variable whether or not each hospital provided that content on the website.

Results:
Eight percent of the hospitals in Puerto Rico do not have a webpage while nighty two percent do. Those hospitals without a webpage belong to the government of Puerto Rico. From the nighty two hospitals with webpage only thirty percent use social media such as Facebook, Twitter and You Tube in their webpage.

Keywords:

Education, social media, healthcare, hospitals.