10 Standard Criteria For Evaluating Alternative Health Care Resources!

Alternative Health CareConfused in selecting an alternative health care resource?

You have to evaluate the medical resources when selecting any of them for your medical condition.

You can find thousands of alternative health care sites.

Among those sites some are created to sell a product, others are created to inform you, and some others exist as a clearing house of information and interaction between you and practitioners.

When ever you want to research about your medical condition, and especially for alternative health care and complementary treatments, it is very much important to evaluate those medical resources for accuracy and slant.

Here are the 10 criteria that help to form an opinion of how trustworthy the information presented in alternative health care resources is.

Who is responsible for the site?

You should be immediately aware of who is responsible and runs the alternative health care web site on which you find your information.

Every of the website should have a link to a “contact us” or “about us” page, as well as a link to the home page of the webs site. If you can’t know who is responsible for the web site then treat the information found on it skeptically.

Who is the sponsor of the site?

Often the people who are responsible for the site are not the people who pay for it or the sponsors of the site. Sometimes you may know it through the domain name. By knowing who is the foothold of the bill can tell a lot about the information that is presented in the site.

For instance, if the sponsor of the web site is a drug company, it may affect the slant of the information that is presented on the web site.

What is the main intension of the alternative health care site?

You can find an undertaking statement or statement of purpose if there is an “about us” page on the web site. The purpose of the site can help you in deciding the reliability of the information on the web site.

Where does the information come from?

Most of the health sites simply copy the information that is collected from other alternative health care sites.

What is the information mainly based on?

All the facts and figures given on the site must have references to articles in medical journals or other alternative health care sources.

How to select the information to publish?

Who read the information from editorial review board of experts for its accuracy? Is the information periodically reviewed to make sure that it remains true?

Is the information on the web site is up to date?

You may know that medical information changes frequently. You should know when the information posted on the web site was last updated or reviewed.

Even though the information has not changed, the last reviewed date should be posted for accuracy. Hence you come to know that the information on the alternative health care resource has been recently reviewed and it is still accurate.

How does the site links to other sites or how it selects the links?

Look at the links from the website. Is the site having links to any other site? If so, is the site chosen valid alternative health care resources? Are the resources linked to anyone that asks – or pays for – a link?

What is the information does the site collect that you needs and why?

Any alternative health care site that collects personal information must have a privacy policy that tells you how they will use the data that they collect. To learn what data they collect and why, you should read the privacy policy.

Can you contact the site owners?

Come across the contact information. The alternative health care site should consist of email address through which you can ask questions and give feedback. If you find any message boards or chat rooms then the site must have terms of service statement.