Online physician review websites poorly correlate to a validated metric of patient satisfaction

Chen, Jennwood; Presson, Angela P.; Zhang, Chong; Ray, David M.; Finlayson, Samuel R.G.; Glasgow, Robert E.

doi:10.1016/j.jss.2018.01.037

Cited by 29 publications

(29 citation statements)

References 22 publications

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“…Our finding that the majority of Web-based reviews were positive supports prior findings [10,16]. Unfortunately, negative reviews do exist and can have a damaging effect on a physician’s reputation and practice [3,5,9,17,18]. The most common category of Yelp complaints was physician demeanor.…”

Section: Discussionsupporting

confidence: 87%

“But His Yelp Reviews Are Awful!”: Analysis of General Surgeons’ Yelp Reviews

Liu¹,

Uffenheimer²,

Nasseri³

et al. 2019

J Med Internet Res

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Background Patients use Web-based platforms to review general surgeons. However, little is known about the free-form text and structured content of the reviews or how they relate to the physicians’ characteristics or their practices. Objective This observational study aimed to analyze the Web-based reviews of general surgeons on the west side of Los Angeles. Methods Demographics, practice characteristics, and Web-based presence were recorded. We evaluated frequency and types of Yelp reviews and assigned negative remarks to 5 categories. Tabulated results were evaluated using independent t test, one-way analysis of variance, and Pearson correlation analysis to determine associations between the number of total and negative reviews with respect to practice structure and physician characteristics. Results Of the 146 general surgeons, 51 (35%) had at least 1 review and 29 (20%) had at least 1 negative review. There were 806 total reviews, 679 (84.2%) positive reviews and 127 (15.8%) negative reviews. The negative reviews contained a total of 376 negative remarks, categorized into physician demeanor (124/376, 32.9%), clinical outcomes (81/376, 22%), office or staff (83/376, 22%), scheduling (44/376, 12%), and billing (44/376, 12%). Surgeons with a professional website had significantly more reviews than those without ( P =.003). Surgeons in private practice had significantly more reviews ( P =.002) and more negative reviews ( P =.03) than surgeons who were institution employed. A strong and direct correlation was found between a surgeon’s number of reviews and number of negative reviews ( P <.001). Conclusions As the most common category of complaints was about physician demeanor, surgeons may optimize their Web-based reputation by improving their bedside manner. A surgeon’s Web presence, private practice, and the total number of reviews are significantly associated with both positive and negative reviews.

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Section: Discussionsupporting

confidence: 87%

“But His Yelp Reviews Are Awful!”: Analysis of General Surgeons’ Yelp Reviews

Liu¹,

Uffenheimer²,

Nasseri³

et al. 2019

J Med Internet Res

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“…As summarized in Table 2, convergent findings suggested a strong association between PORs and traditional patient satisfaction surveys. For example, several studies found moderate-to-high degrees of correlation between PORs and HCAHPS patient experience measures [31,33,34,53,66] and the Press Ganey Medical Practice Survey for patient satisfaction [67], respectively. Content analysis studies also reported a considerable overlap between the narrative comments of PORs and thematic domains of HCAHPS surveys [47,50,51].…”

Section: Resultsmentioning

confidence: 99%

What Do Patients Say About Doctors Online? A Systematic Review of Studies on Patient Online Reviews

Hong¹,

Liang²,

Radcliff³

et al. 2019

J Med Internet Res

100

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Background The number of patient online reviews (PORs) has grown significantly, and PORs have played an increasingly important role in patients’ choice of health care providers. Objective The objective of our study was to systematically review studies on PORs, summarize the major findings and study characteristics, identify literature gaps, and make recommendations for future research. Methods A major database search was completed in January 2019. Studies were included if they (1) focused on PORs of physicians and hospitals, (2) reported qualitative or quantitative results from analysis of PORs, and (3) peer-reviewed empirical studies. Study characteristics and major findings were synthesized using predesigned tables. Results A total of 63 studies (69 articles) that met the above criteria were included in the review. Most studies (n=48) were conducted in the United States, including Puerto Rico, and the remaining were from Europe, Australia, and China. Earlier studies (published before 2010) used content analysis with small sample sizes; more recent studies retrieved and analyzed larger datasets using machine learning technologies. The number of PORs ranged from fewer than 200 to over 700,000. About 90% of the studies were focused on clinicians, typically specialists such as surgeons; 27% covered health care organizations, typically hospitals; and some studied both. A majority of PORs were positive and patients’ comments on their providers were favorable. Although most studies were descriptive, some compared PORs with traditional surveys of patient experience and found a high degree of correlation and some compared PORs with clinical outcomes but found a low level of correlation. Conclusions PORs contain valuable information that can generate insights into quality of care and patient-provider relationship, but it has not been systematically used for studies of health care quality. With the advancement of machine learning and data analysis tools, we anticipate more research on PORs based on testable hypotheses and rigorous analytic methods. Trial Registration International Prospective Register of Systematic Reviews (PROSPERO) CRD42018085057; https://www.crd.york.ac.uk/PROSPERO/display_record.php?RecordID=85057 (Archived by WebCite at http://www.webcitation.org/76ddvTZ1C)

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“…27 Chen and associates conducted a similar study among 200 faculty members at the University of Utah and documented similar results. 24 Widmer and colleagues studied physicians at the Mayo Clinic, matching 113 physicians with negative online reviews to 113 physicians without negative reviews, and found similar Press Ganey scores in the two groups. 26 Ricciardi and colleagues compared publicly available internal ratings with online ratings for 415 orthopaedic surgeons, although no overall correlation was calculated.…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 97%

“…Given that these internal ratings are based on validated survey methodologies and include a large number of responses solicited from a broad and random sample of the patient population, it is possible that they could provide a better estimate of each physician's actual patient satisfaction rating. While some prior reports have sought to assess the correlation between online and internal physician ratings, these have primarily been small-scale studies of academic physicians that were restricted to a limited number of websites 24 or a single subspecialty, 25 institution, 26 or department. 27 In this study, we sought to determine the extent to which publicly available online ratings of physicians, which are typically based on a small number of unsolicited reviews, correlate with internal patient-submitted ratings from a large integrated healthcare delivery system.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%