What Medical Crowdfunding Campaigns Can Tell Us About Local Health System Gaps and Deficiencies: Exploratory Analysis of British Columbia, Canada

BACKGROUND: There are a range of perceived gaps and shortcomings in the publicly funded Canadian health system. These include wait times for care, lack of public insurance coverage for dental care and pharmaceuticals, and difficulties accessing specialist care. Medical crowdfunding is a response to...

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Autores principales: Snyder, Jeremy, Zenone, Marco, Crooks, Valorie, Schuurman, Nadine
Formato: Online Artículo Texto
Lenguaje:English
Publicado: JMIR Publications 2020
Materias:
Acceso en línea:https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC7275257/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/32348269
http://dx.doi.org/10.2196/16982
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author Snyder, Jeremy
Zenone, Marco
Crooks, Valorie
Schuurman, Nadine
author_facet Snyder, Jeremy
Zenone, Marco
Crooks, Valorie
Schuurman, Nadine
author_sort Snyder, Jeremy
collection PubMed
description BACKGROUND: There are a range of perceived gaps and shortcomings in the publicly funded Canadian health system. These include wait times for care, lack of public insurance coverage for dental care and pharmaceuticals, and difficulties accessing specialist care. Medical crowdfunding is a response to these gaps where individuals raise funds from their social networks to address health-related needs. OBJECTIVE: This study aimed to investigate the potential of crowdfunding data to better understand what health-related needs individuals are using crowdfunding for, how these needs compare with the existing commentary on health system deficiencies, and the advantages and limitations of using crowdfunding campaigns to enhance or augment our understanding of perceived health system deficiencies. METHODS: Crowdfunding campaigns were scraped from the GoFundMe website. These campaigns were then limited to those originating in the metropolitan Vancouver region of two health authorities during 2018. These campaigns were then further limited to those raising funds to allow the treatment of a medical problem or related to needs arising from ill health. These campaigns were then reviewed to identify the underlying health issue and motivation for pursuing crowdfunding. RESULTS: We identified 423 campaigns for health-related needs. These campaigns requested CAD $8,715,806 (US $6,088,078) in funding and were pledged CAD $3,477,384 (US $2,428,987) from 27,773 donors. The most common underlying medical condition for campaign recipients was cancer, followed by traumatic injuries from collisions and brain injury and stroke. By far, the most common factor of motivation for crowdfunding was seeking financial support for wages lost because of illness (232/684, 33.9%). Some campaigns (65/684, 9.5%) sought help with purchasing medical equipment and supplies; 8.2% (56/684) sought to fund complementary, alternative, or unproven treatments including experimental interventions; 7.2% (49/684) sought financial support to cover travel-related costs, including in-province and out-of-province (49/684, 7.2%) travel; and 6.3% (43/684) campaigns sought help to pay for medication. CONCLUSIONS: This analysis demonstrates the potential of crowdfunding data to present timely and context-specific user-created insights into the perceived health-related financial needs of some Canadians. Although the literature on perceived limitations of the Canadian health system focuses on wait times for care and limited access to specialist services, among other issues, these campaigners were much more motivated by gaps in the wider social system such as costs related to unpaid time off work and travel to access care. Our findings demonstrate spatial differences in the underlying medical problems, motivations for crowdfunding, and success using crowdfunding that warrants additional attention. These differences may support established concerns that medical crowdfunding is most commonly used by individuals from relatively privileged socioeconomic backgrounds. We encourage the development of new resources to harness the power of crowdfunding data as a supplementary source of information for Canadian health system stakeholders.
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spelling pubmed-72752572020-06-16 What Medical Crowdfunding Campaigns Can Tell Us About Local Health System Gaps and Deficiencies: Exploratory Analysis of British Columbia, Canada Snyder, Jeremy Zenone, Marco Crooks, Valorie Schuurman, Nadine J Med Internet Res Original Paper BACKGROUND: There are a range of perceived gaps and shortcomings in the publicly funded Canadian health system. These include wait times for care, lack of public insurance coverage for dental care and pharmaceuticals, and difficulties accessing specialist care. Medical crowdfunding is a response to these gaps where individuals raise funds from their social networks to address health-related needs. OBJECTIVE: This study aimed to investigate the potential of crowdfunding data to better understand what health-related needs individuals are using crowdfunding for, how these needs compare with the existing commentary on health system deficiencies, and the advantages and limitations of using crowdfunding campaigns to enhance or augment our understanding of perceived health system deficiencies. METHODS: Crowdfunding campaigns were scraped from the GoFundMe website. These campaigns were then limited to those originating in the metropolitan Vancouver region of two health authorities during 2018. These campaigns were then further limited to those raising funds to allow the treatment of a medical problem or related to needs arising from ill health. These campaigns were then reviewed to identify the underlying health issue and motivation for pursuing crowdfunding. RESULTS: We identified 423 campaigns for health-related needs. These campaigns requested CAD $8,715,806 (US $6,088,078) in funding and were pledged CAD $3,477,384 (US $2,428,987) from 27,773 donors. The most common underlying medical condition for campaign recipients was cancer, followed by traumatic injuries from collisions and brain injury and stroke. By far, the most common factor of motivation for crowdfunding was seeking financial support for wages lost because of illness (232/684, 33.9%). Some campaigns (65/684, 9.5%) sought help with purchasing medical equipment and supplies; 8.2% (56/684) sought to fund complementary, alternative, or unproven treatments including experimental interventions; 7.2% (49/684) sought financial support to cover travel-related costs, including in-province and out-of-province (49/684, 7.2%) travel; and 6.3% (43/684) campaigns sought help to pay for medication. CONCLUSIONS: This analysis demonstrates the potential of crowdfunding data to present timely and context-specific user-created insights into the perceived health-related financial needs of some Canadians. Although the literature on perceived limitations of the Canadian health system focuses on wait times for care and limited access to specialist services, among other issues, these campaigners were much more motivated by gaps in the wider social system such as costs related to unpaid time off work and travel to access care. Our findings demonstrate spatial differences in the underlying medical problems, motivations for crowdfunding, and success using crowdfunding that warrants additional attention. These differences may support established concerns that medical crowdfunding is most commonly used by individuals from relatively privileged socioeconomic backgrounds. We encourage the development of new resources to harness the power of crowdfunding data as a supplementary source of information for Canadian health system stakeholders. JMIR Publications 2020-05-22 /pmc/articles/PMC7275257/ /pubmed/32348269 http://dx.doi.org/10.2196/16982 Text en ©Jeremy Snyder, Marco Zenone, Valorie Crooks, Nadine Schuurman. Originally published in the Journal of Medical Internet Research (http://www.jmir.org), 22.05.2020. https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/ This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/), which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work, first published in the Journal of Medical Internet Research, is properly cited. The complete bibliographic information, a link to the original publication on http://www.jmir.org/, as well as this copyright and license information must be included.
spellingShingle Original Paper
Snyder, Jeremy
Zenone, Marco
Crooks, Valorie
Schuurman, Nadine
What Medical Crowdfunding Campaigns Can Tell Us About Local Health System Gaps and Deficiencies: Exploratory Analysis of British Columbia, Canada
title What Medical Crowdfunding Campaigns Can Tell Us About Local Health System Gaps and Deficiencies: Exploratory Analysis of British Columbia, Canada
title_full What Medical Crowdfunding Campaigns Can Tell Us About Local Health System Gaps and Deficiencies: Exploratory Analysis of British Columbia, Canada
title_fullStr What Medical Crowdfunding Campaigns Can Tell Us About Local Health System Gaps and Deficiencies: Exploratory Analysis of British Columbia, Canada
title_full_unstemmed What Medical Crowdfunding Campaigns Can Tell Us About Local Health System Gaps and Deficiencies: Exploratory Analysis of British Columbia, Canada
title_short What Medical Crowdfunding Campaigns Can Tell Us About Local Health System Gaps and Deficiencies: Exploratory Analysis of British Columbia, Canada
title_sort what medical crowdfunding campaigns can tell us about local health system gaps and deficiencies: exploratory analysis of british columbia, canada
topic Original Paper
url https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC7275257/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/32348269
http://dx.doi.org/10.2196/16982
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