Online Reputations: Comparing Hospital- and Patient-Generated Ratings in Academic Otolaryngology

Abstract

Objectives: This study compares hospital-generated online ratings to patient-generated online ratings in academic otolaryngology and evaluates physician factors influencing these results. Methods: Websites of academic otolaryngologists were assessed for inclusion of hospital-generated Press Ganey surveys. Corresponding scores on Healthgrades and Vitals.com were identified via internet search. Hospital ratings were compared with patient-generated ratings, including score, demographics, and number of ratings. All data was collected between July 15th 2019 and August 22nd 2019. Results: 742 academic otolaryngologists with hospital-generated ratings were identified. Mean hospital-generated rating was significantly higher ((4.70, 95% CI 4.69-4.72) than patient-generated rating (Vitals:4.26, 95% CI 4.18-4.34, and Healthgrades:4.02, 95% CI 3.87-4.18; P < .001). In patient-generated rating, an increased number of rating scores (>20) was associated with male gender, professor ranking, and >30 years in practice ( P < .005). Physician demographics did not impact number of ratings in hospital-generated setting. With patient-generated, lower aggregate score was associated with professor ranking ( P = .001). In hospital-generated, lower score was associated with >30+ years in practice ( P = .023). Across all platforms, comprehensive otolaryngologists and neurotologists/otologists were rated lower in comparison to other specialties (PGS: P < .001,Vitals: P = .027,Healthgrades: P = .016). Conclusion: Hospital-generated ratings yield higher mean scores than patient-generated platforms. Between sources, Healthgrades.com scores were lower than those of Vitals.com . Professors with >30 years of practice generated more reviews in patient-generated ratings, and these physicians were generally rated lower. Access to patient-generated ratings is universal and physicians should be aware of variability between online rating platforms as scores may affect referrals and practice patterns.

A natural language processing approach to uncover patterns among online ratings of otolaryngologists

“…10 Prior studies that have found more favourable reviews for younger physicians have suggested that older physicians have been in practice for longer and thus had more time to accumulate negative reviews, or speculated that younger physicians may have better interpersonal skills because of an increased emphasis on this during medical training over recent years. 11,24 Our study found that otolaryngologists practising in the Northeast and Western USA had the worst sentiment scores and lowest star scores. These results are similar to those found by Goshtasbi et al, who reported that neuro-otologist review ratings were lower among those in the Western USA compared with the South.…”

“…26 Second, we were limited by our decision to bulk scrape data from only Healthgrades; nevertheless, our numbers of physicians analysed are larger than any previously published study in general otolaryngology. [9][10][11] We were only able to freely extract data from this website, because other websites such as Google, Vitals, Yelp or Zocdoc cannot be filtered, or the source code does not allow scraping. Therefore, based on previously published work, we focused on scraping large data from Healthgrades in the interest of feasibility.…”

“…10 Prior studies that have found more favourable reviews for younger physicians have suggested that older physicians have been in practice for longer and thus had more time to accumulate negative reviews, or speculated that younger physicians may have better interpersonal skills because of an increased emphasis on this during medical training over recent years. 11,24…”

“…10 A 2021 study comparing hospital-generated online otolaryngologist ratings with physician rating website otolaryngologist ratings similarly found that professionals with over 30 years of experience tended to have lower ratings. 11 However, these two studies strictly analysed and compared numerical online rating scores, and only one study assessed descriptive comments using a qualitative analysis, but without a standardised approach.…”