Doctor ratings websites can be biased, clinically insignificant, and statistically unreliable. They’re also growing rapidly. In 2011, Inc. Magazine listed vitals.com, a popular doctor rating site, as No. 47 out of the top 100 fasting growing private companies; it grew an impressive 4,637% between 2008 and 2011.
Similarly, a study by Guodong Gordon Gao and colleagues, published in The Journal of Medical Internet Research in February 2012, found a 100-fold increase in the number of ratings on ratemds.com over the last 5 years (J. Med. Internet Res. 2012;14:e38 [doi:10.2196/jmir.2003]). Healthgrades.com, another well known doctor rating site, has 15 million visitors every month, and continues to grow.
As physicians, we have a responsibility to educate ourselves about such rating sites and to use them to our advantage. Start by thinking of them more as directories than rating sites and using them to promote you and your practice.
Most physicians, policy leaders, and consumers believe that transparency will ultimately improve the quality of health care. However, in their current state, doctor rating sites suffer from significant drawbacks, including a limited number of reviews, which skews results either positive or negative, a dearth of reviews about physician quality, and inaccurate information about physicians and practices.
According to a May 2011 report by the Pew Research Center (pewinternet.org) only 4% of Internet users have posted a review online of a doctor. In fact, many physicians have only one patient review.
New York Times columnist Ron Leiber wrote in a March 2012 article that there is a supply and demand problem with doctor rating sites: Most consumers want the information and would trust sites that had more reviews, yet the vast majority of patients are not posting them.
Many physicians lament that online doctor reviews skew heavily toward nonclinical issues, such as office decor, rather than the quality of care delivered. This is not likely to change anytime soon. That’s because patients equate service with quality. This isn’t their fault. As humans, we all make this mistake. When asked a difficult question, rather than do the work required to answer it, we tend to substitute an easier question and answer that instead.
To answer the difficult question, Is he or she a high quality physician? a patient would have to research your training and experience and be able to critique your diagnostic skills and treatment outcomes. Of course, they don’t do this.
Instead, they ask the question, Did I like him or her? and base their answer on the service they received, something they can easily access and understand. Hence, the overwhelming number of doctor reviews that mention wait times, office tidiness, support staff interactions, and bedside manner.
Physicians can still learn a lot from such feedback, so don’t dismiss it. We all spend tremendous time and effort on continuing education to ensure that we deliver high quality health care. We need to be sure we spend adequate time and effort on service delivery as well. Otherwise, much of that value will be lost on our patients.
Whether you like them or not, doctor rating sites are here to stay. You won’t knock them completely off the front page of a Google search on you or your practice, and a vaccine against them has not yet been developed.
But realize this: Several studies show that the average rating for doctors is quite good. For example, a study led by Bassam Kadry and colleagues, published in The Journal of Medical Internet Research in November 2011, found that, depending on the scale, the average doctor rating was 77 out of 100, 3.84 out of 5, and 3.1 out of 4 (J. Med. Internet Res. 2011;13:e95 [doi:10.2196/jmir.1960]).
So, here’s my advice to you: Visit the most used doctor rating sites such as healthgrades.com, ratemds.com, vitals.com, and zocdoc.com as well as angieslist.com and yelp.com, and make your profile as patient friendly as possible. Upload a good picture of yourself or consider doing a short video bio. Provide an accurate professional bio as well as personal information, such as your favorite sports teams, pets, hobbies, or anything else that makes you unique and approachable. Include all medical degrees, academic affiliations, and clinical interests, as well as current office information and links to practice websites, blogs, and social networks you frequent such as Twitter. Check in every month or so to provide updates and read user comments.
In the meantime, keep being the caring, qualified doctor you are. That’s the best defense against worrying about doctor rating sites.
This column, Digital Dermatology, appears in Dermatology News. Dr. Benabio is in private practice in San Diego. Visit his consumer health blog at http://thedermblog.com; connect with him on Twitter@Dermdoc, and on Facebook (DermDoc).