Content, Quality, and Assessment Tools of Physician-Rating Websites in 12 Countries: Quantitative Analysis

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Abstract

Background

Websites on which users can rate their physician are becoming increasingly popular, but little is known about the website quality, the information content, and the tools they offer users to assess physicians. This study assesses these aspects on physician-rating websites in German- and English-speaking countries.

Objective

The objective of this study was to collect information on websites with a physician rating or review tool in 12 countries in terms of metadata, website quality (transparency, privacy and freedom of speech of physicians and patients, check mechanisms for appropriateness and accuracy of reviews, and ease of page navigation), professional information about the physician, rating scales and tools, as well as traffic rank.

Methods

A systematic Web search based on a set of predefined keywords was conducted on Google, Bing, and Yahoo in August 2016. A final sample of 143 physician-rating websites was analyzed and coded for metadata, quality, information content, and the physician-rating tools.

Results

The majority of websites were registered in the United States (40/143) or Germany (25/143). The vast majority were commercially owned (120/143, 83.9%), and 69.9% (100/143) displayed some form of physician advertisement. Overall, information content (mean 9.95/25) as well as quality were low (mean 18.67/47). Websites registered in the United Kingdom obtained the highest quality scores (mean 26.50/47), followed by Australian websites (mean 21.50/47). In terms of rating tools, physician-rating websites were most frequently asking users to score overall performance, punctuality, or wait time in practice.

Conclusions

This study evidences that websites that provide physician rating should improve and communicate their quality standards, especially in terms of physician and user protection, as well as transparency. In addition, given that quality standards on physician-rating websites are low overall, the development of transparent guidelines is required. Furthermore, attention should be paid to the financial goals that the majority of physician-rating websites, especially the ones that are commercially owned, pursue.

Related collections

Most cited references 27

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Klaus Krippendorff (2004)

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Determinants of patient choice of healthcare providers: a scoping review

Aafke Victoor, Diana MJ Delnoij, Roland Friele … (2012)

Background In several northwest European countries, a demand-driven healthcare system has been implemented that stresses the importance of patient healthcare provider choice. In this study, we are conducting a scoping review aiming to map out what is known about the determinants of patient choice of a wide range of healthcare providers. As far as we know, not many studies are currently available that attempt to draw a general picture of how patients choose a healthcare provider and of the status of research on this subject. This study is therefore a valuable contribution to the growing amount of literature about patient choice. Methods We carried out a specific type of literature review known as a scoping review. Scoping reviews try to examine the breadth of knowledge that is available about a particular topic and therefore do not make selections or apply quality constraints. Firstly, we defined our research questions and searched the literature in Embase, Medline and PubMed. Secondly, we selected the literature, and finally we analysed and summarized the information. Results Our review shows that patients’ choices are determined by a complex interplay between patient and provider characteristics. A variety of patient characteristics determines whether patients make choices, are willing and able to choose, and how they choose. Patients take account of a variety of structural, process and outcome characteristics of providers, differing in the relative importance they attach to these characteristics. Conclusions There is no such thing as the typical patient: different patients make different choices in different situations. Comparative information seems to have a relatively limited influence on the choices made by many patients and patients base their decisions on a variety of provider characteristics instead of solely on outcome characteristics. The assumptions made in health policy about patient choice may therefore be an oversimplification of reality. Several knowledge gaps were identified that need follow-up research.

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Harnessing the cloud of patient experience: using social media to detect poor quality healthcare.

Ara Darzi, Felix Greaves, Daniel Morales-Cano … (2013)

Recent years have seen increasing interest in patient-centred care and calls to focus on improving the patient experience. At the same time, a growing number of patients are using the internet to describe their experiences of healthcare. We believe the increasing availability of patients' accounts of their care on blogs, social networks, Twitter and hospital review sites presents an intriguing opportunity to advance the patient-centred care agenda and provide novel quality of care data. We describe this concept as a 'cloud of patient experience'. In this commentary, we outline the ways in which the collection and aggregation of patients' descriptions of their experiences on the internet could be used to detect poor clinical care. Over time, such an approach could also identify excellence and allow it to be built on. We suggest using the techniques of natural language processing and sentiment analysis to transform unstructured descriptions of patient experience on the internet into usable measures of healthcare performance. We consider the various sources of information that could be used, the limitations of the approach and discuss whether these new techniques could detect poor performance before conventional measures of healthcare quality.

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Author and article information

Contributors

Fabia Rothenfluh:

Institute of Communication and HealthUniversità della Svizzera italianaVia G. Buffi 13Lugano, 6900Switzerland41 058 666 4485fabia.rothenfluh@usi.ch

ORCID: http://orcid.org/0000-0002-5518-1094

Journal

Journal ID (nlm-ta): J Med Internet Res

Journal ID (iso-abbrev): J. Med. Internet Res

Journal ID (publisher-id): JMIR

Title: Journal of Medical Internet Research

Publisher: JMIR Publications (Toronto, Canada )

ISSN (Print): 1439-4456

ISSN (Electronic): 1438-8871

Publication date Collection: June 2018

Publication date (Electronic): 14 June 2018

Volume: 20

Issue: 6

Electronic Location Identifier: e212

Affiliations

[1] ¹ Institute of Communication and Health Università della Svizzera italiana Lugano Switzerland

Author notes

Corresponding Author: Fabia Rothenfluh fabia.rothenfluh@ 123456usi.ch

Author information

Fabia Rothenfluh http://orcid.org/0000-0002-5518-1094

Peter J Schulz http://orcid.org/0000-0003-4281-489X

Article

Publisher ID: v20i6e212

DOI: 10.2196/jmir.9105

PMC ID: 6024097

PubMed ID: 29903704

SO-VID: c728976a-e6b2-4368-8134-2293fa7c33e4

License:

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.

History

Date received : 3 October 2017

Date revision requested : 9 November 2017

Date revision received : 6 January 2018

Date accepted : 13 March 2018

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