It’s more than interesting to find out how consumers perceive health care practitioners these days.

Marge Axelrad

Literally every day, media coverage of health issues ranges from reports on new government legislation, medical insurance and prescription drug pricing to managed care and the latest research on disease management.

Throughout it all, and gradually but notably, today’s consumers are taking a more proactive role in understanding their own health conditions and are sort of turning the traditional tables at their phyisicians’ offices to ask questions, more intent on understanding not only the ‘what’ of current medical treatments and diagnoses but the ‘why’ as well.

An interesting study, recently undertaken by Jobson Research, via its regular VisionWatch survey of thousands of U.S. consumers, posed a series of questions about how and where consumers are getting medical and health care information today.

In a Jobson/VisionWatch custom survey of 2,139 adults in July, consumers were asked which were their primary sources of general medical information as well as vision issues. The results, which we’ll present more extensively next month, illustrate that the availability of information--of all types--on the Internet is changing the dynamics.

However, it’s the primary care medical professional and the eyecare professional in particular, who remain the most important source to most consumers.

For general health information, about 56  percent of respondents said their personal physician was their primary source. Another 21 percent cited the internet as their primary source.

When it comes to vision-related information, some 60 percent of respondents said it was their eyecare professional who was their primary source for information, with about 19 percent still relying on their primary physician for such info and a smaller number, 7.4 percent, using the internet for vision care information.

The primary reasons that people are seeking out vision-related medical information were, in this order: to learn more about eye health conditions, to learn more about eyecare or eyecare products, to find an eyecare professional.

Another group--about equal among number of respondents--was to research eyeglasses or to learn more about refractive surgery. Interesting.