Physician ratings found online were so unstructured and sparse that they may be effectively useless, a study determined. From a random sample of 600 physicians in Boston, Portland, Ore., and Dallas, each physician got a median of seven reviews across 28 websites, 26 of which used star ratings. Written reviews were less common than star ratings across all specialties, reported Tara Lagu, MD, MPH, of Baystate Medical Center in Springfield, Mass., and colleagues. A third of physicians had no online reviews at all. Those most likely to have star reviews were neurologists (83%), internal medicine specialists (77%), surgeons (77%), psychiatrists (76%), and ob/gyns (75%), they wrote online in the Journal of the American Medical Association. "The number of physician reviews online appears to be increasing (a similar 2009 study revealed only 190 reviews for 300 physicians across 33 sites, with 73% of physicians having no review on any site). However, the increase in number of reviews that we observed was not meaningful; most physicians in 2016 still had no more than 1 review on any site," according to Lagu's group. "This study is limited by small sample size, inability to limit the denominator to practicing physicians, and inability to assess the effect of reviews on patients or physicians. We did not attempt to analyze quantitative ratings because of the paucity of reviews per physician and variation in scales across sites," they cautioned. "Despite these limitations, these results demonstrate that it is difficult for a prospective patient to find (for any given physician on any commercial physician-rating website) a quantity of reviews that would accurately relay the experience of care with that physician." The authors noted that online reviews were largely unstructured, with patients variably addressing the doctor's availability, punctuality, and other aspects of care. Lagu's group suggested that surveys and other forms of systematic data collection "may have a greater chance of amassing a sufficient quantity and quality of reviews to allow patients to make inferences about patient experience of care." "[Custom patient] surveys have a high rate of being returned, and most of the time patients are quite happy with their care and their visit. The surveys generate their own rating score, and enable the practice to post this on their website with a notation of how many responses have been analyzed," commented Bryan S. Jick, MD, an ob/gyn at Huntington Hospital and Fair Oaks Women's Health in Pasadena, Calif. "I would like to see this become the predominant source of online reviews one day," Jick, who was not involved in the study, told MedPage Today. "Regarding the study, I was surprised to see Yelp ranked #8 on the list in terms of total number of reviews. I am familiar with these other sites as well, but in my experience the top four sites on this list [Healthgrades.com, Vitals.com, UCompareHealthCare.com, RateMDs.com] are close to worthless in their content. They use a number scoring system and most of those reviews have either no narrative content at all or perhaps one to two sentences. I believe that patients would rather read a detailed review of someone's experience -- good or bad -- rather than just a bunch of numbers, when trying to get a feel for an individual physician." Jick said he was proactive in managing his practice's reputation online. Having "learned the hard way to not be too emotional," he now posts thought-out replies to negative reviews and apologizes if he and his colleagues are to blame. "But I will also strongly disagree with some of the statements made by disgruntled and unhappy patients," he said. "We try very hard to get our super-happy patients to post online reviews, and this works to some extent, but this is just another fact of life all physicians need to accept," he continued. "We need to up our game and handle those negative situations to the best of our ability. Hire friendly and helpful staff. Intercept the upset patient before they leave the office and do everything you can to prevent those negative reviews in the first place!" Source
