sician ratings is the ever-growing number of physician rating sites. Different patients go to one of many sites to rate their doctors, so J.D.’s rating on RateYourDoc.org would come from just 2.4 patient reviews on average.1 Therefore, one strong review significantly affects a rating, meaning a physician’s rating on each of many sites is commonly polarized. This leads to a confusing mix of inforsite would give J.D. 5 stars whereas another would give him 1 1/2 (poor J.D. would be heartbroken). Another problem with online physician ratings is they don’t represent a physician’s entire patient population. Only 3 percent of patients post reviews of their physicians online.2 Though online physician ratrecent study found that 86 percent of a sample of 500 urologists sicians are skeptical and frustrat-
ed with them, considering them nothing more than a popularity contest (as we saw in Scrubs).1,3 In fact, only 39 percent of doctors agree with their ratings.3 The good news for these physicians is that less than one-fifth of patients consult online ratings.2 Accordingly, many physicians believe that online ratings do not significantly affect them.3 Online physician ratings remain a problem, and an improved system would be useful. Better systems exist for use by physicians organizational rating systems that physicians trust.3 Unfortunately, those ratings are not available to patients. Many people realize the need for an accessible, accurate ratings system and are working on creating one. “Health care report cards” are a prominent example of one of these systems. These report the patient health outcomes of health care providers to the public. For
example, you could compare several Chicago hospitals’ success rates of cardiac surgeries, and make your decision on where to go for your cardiac surgery accordingly. Report cards seem like a good system since they’re based on cold, hard data, but one study found that they actually decreased overall patient welfare. Why? Report cards discouraged providers from taking on harder cases. Providers would take on easier cardiac surgeries so that the success rate of cardiac surgery from that provider would be higher on report cards. This made it extremely hard for high-risk patients to get care.4 There are many other studies working on finding systems to evaluate health care providers. One quirkier one found a correlation between the quality of a hospital and the number of likes it had on Facebook!5 Overall, though, no systems to replace online physician ratings have gained much traction yet. For now, the old-fashioned method of asking your friends who the best doctor in town is may be your best bet for a reliable physician rating. The Internet could lead you astray.
References 1) Ellimoottil, C., Hart, A., Greco, K., Quek, M., Farooq, A. (2012, December 7). Online Review of 500 Urologists. 2) Fox, S., Duggan, M. (2013, January 15). One in three American adults have gone online to figure out a medical condition. 3) Johnson, C. (2013, January 16). ACPE Survey Finds Most Physician Leaders Skeptical of Online Ratings. 4) Dranove, D., Kessler, D., McClellan, M., Satterthwaite, M. (2003, May 20). Is More Information Better? The Effects of ‘Report Cards’ on Health Care Providers. 5) Timian, A., Rupcic, S., Kachnowski, S., Luisi, P. (2013, February 1). Do Patients “Like” Good Care? Measuring Hospital Quality via Facebook.
The number of online physician review websites with conflicting reports can make it difficult to accurately gauge the ability of a physician. HTTP://WWW.HEALTHGRADES.COM
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Designfreebies Magazine www.designfreebies.org The Medical Decoder Phi•Delta Epsilon Il Gamma • 5