Consumer health information services: preliminary findings about who is using them.

Focus groups and in-depth telephone interviews were used to develop a telephone questionnaire later completed by people 55 years and older about their use of a Health Information Support Telephone Service (HISTS). Preliminary findings identified an equal number of well educated male and female callers, who called for information for themselves. The confidentially of the service was very important to respondents and may have impacted the time to recruit people for the focus groups. The second study described is a pilot test completed by three Consumer Health Information/Resource Centres (CHIRC). An Info Script was used by health professionals to direct people to information centres. Preliminary results indicate that over half of the participants stated they visited the information centre because they were given an Info Script and that they would not have gone without the Info Script.