Home   >   Business & Economy   >   Rating Doctors Is Tricky, But Consumer Reports Does It In Massachusetts

Rating Doctors Is Tricky, But Consumer Reports Does It In Massachusetts

By on July 3, 2012

Boston, MA, United States (KaiserHealth) – Physicians have long been prickly about Web sites that assign them points or letter grades or even smiley and frowning faces based on patient reviews of their experiences. Picking a physician is more complicated than buying a toaster, they say, and doctors can’t be accurately evaluated solely on the basis of whether they’re good communicators, for example, or keep appointments punctually.

Now Consumer Reports, a leading publisher of, among other things, buyers’ guides for toasters and other appliances, has ventured into physician rating territory in Massachusetts. The ratings, published as an insert in the July issue for the magazine’s Massachusetts subscribers and available online as well, put 487 primary-care and pediatric practices through their paces, assigning scores from 1 to 4 in each of five categories related to patient experience.

To create the ratings, Consumer Reports partnered with Massachusetts Health Quality Partners (MHQP), a nonprofit that since 2006 has been surveying Massachusetts consumers about their experiences with doctors and reporting the data.

Consumer Reports is dipping its toe into an increasingly popular area. The organization is working with groups in Wisconsin and Minnesota to develop physician ratings in those states as well, although they won’t be focused on patient experience as they are in Massachusetts, says John Santa, director of the company’s health ratings center. Minnesota’s ratings will focus on quality of care, while Wisconsin’s will focus on preventive care.

“We’re trying to learn about this,” says Santa. “For us, physician ratings is a journey, not a destination.”

More From This Series Insuring Your Health

There are many ways to assess a physician’s competence, but patient reports of their one-on-one experiences — whether the doctor is a good listener, for example, or spends enough time with each patient — are more than just feel-good measures, says Barbra Rabson, executive director of MHQP. “Studies show that the better the patient experience, the better the clinical outcome,” she says.

Massachusetts doctors support the project, says Richard Aghababian, president of the Massachusetts Medical Society. “We want all of our physicians to feel they should be accountable for the care they provide,” he says.

It helps that physicians say they are comfortable with the methodology behind the ratings. The Massachusetts ratings are based on surveys completed by more than 64,000 adults. In order to be considered statistically reliable, a certain number of responses about an individual physician had to be received, says Rabson.

More than 50 Web sites rate physicians, according to Guodong Gordon Gao, co-director of the Center for Health Information and Decision Systems at the University of Maryland School of Business. http://www.rhsmith.umd.edu/chids/ In contrast to the Massachusetts ratings, some sites allow consumers to log on and rate individual physicians anonymously. Physicians generally don’t like such sites, saying there is no accountability and no way for doctors to defend themselves against criticism.

Consumer Reports doctor ratings issue

But a recent study by Gao and colleagues found that physicians may have less to worry about than they suppose. The study examined more than 386,000 anonymous physician ratings posted on the RateMDs.com Web site between 2005 and 2010. RateMDs.com, which started in 2004, was selected because it was one of the first sites to rate doctors, has the largest number of user-submitted reviews and is among the fastest-growing, says Gao. Some 250,000 U.S. doctors have been rated at least once on the site, according to RateMDs.com co-founder John Swapceinski.

RateMDs.com assigns physicians an overall rating of 1 to 5 based on patient assessments of their knowledge and helpfulness. The study found that, on average, physicians received a quality rating of 3.93 out of 5. Nearly half received a perfect 5 rating. The average number of ratings per physician was 3.2 in January 2010.

“The number-one surprise was the positive results,” says Gao. “The American Medical Association and others have said that the sites can ruin physicians’ reputations.”

In a statement, the AMA said that “anonymous online opinions of physicians should be taken with a grain of salt and should not be a patient’s sole source of information when looking for a new physician.”

The study results are consistent with other types of online consumer ratings, says Ritu Agarwal, director of the Center for Health Information and Decision Systems and co-author of the study. “In studies of word of mouth in other domains such as movies and books, positive word of mouth dominates negative in online ratings.”

Physician reviews that skew toward the positive may please doctors, but for consumers they’re not particularly useful as a guide in selecting one. Experts point to the comments that people often include with their ratings, saying they can be helpful in assessing a physician, as long as people keep in mind that each is just one person’s opinion.

For example, someone might read a review that says a doctor returns phone calls on weekends, says Anne Weiss, who directs the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation’s health-care quality work; the foundation provided funding for the Massachusetts ratings project. “That might be really important to me.”

Rating sites of any sort help consumers take a more active role in managing their health and making health-care choices, say experts. And that’s important, whether the information comes from a scientifically valid survey or an anonymous online review.

“There are lots of things people could pick up that I would not call evidence-based,” says Weiss. “But even those are opportunities for people to understand their role as consumers.”

Please send comments or ideas for future topics for the Insuring Your Health column to questions@kaiserhealthnews.org.

– Provided by Kaiser Health News.






7 Comments

  1. Renate

    August 9, 2012 at 7:25 pm

    Attractive section of content. I just stumbled upon your
    weblog and in accession capital to assert
    that I acquire actually enjoyed account your blog posts.
    Any way I will be subscribing to your augment and even I
    achievement you access consistently rapidly.

    Reply

  2. Nila

    August 9, 2012 at 10:54 pm

    Thanks , I’ve recently been searching for info approximately this subject for a while and yours is the greatest I’ve came upon so far.
    However, what in regards to the bottom line? Are you
    positive concerning the supply?

    Reply

  3. Vernell

    August 10, 2012 at 9:29 pm

    Way cool! Some extremely valid points! I appreciate you penning this post
    plus the rest of the site is extremely good.

    Reply

  4. Kendra

    August 10, 2012 at 9:33 pm

    Hello, i read your blog occasionally and i own a similar one and
    i was just wondering if you get a lot of spam comments? If so how do you protect against it, any plugin
    or anything you can recommend? I get so
    much lately it’s driving me crazy so any help is very much appreciated.

    Reply

  5. Kacey

    August 21, 2012 at 9:16 pm

    Your means of telling all in this article is genuinely fastidious, every one be able to
    easily understand it, Thanks a lot.

    Reply

  6. Enrique

    August 23, 2012 at 12:45 am

    I’m amazed, I have to admit. Seldom do I encounter a blog that’s both equally
    educative and engaging, and let me tell you, you have hit the nail on
    the head. The problem is something that too few folks are speaking intelligently about.
    Now i’m very happy that I stumbled across this in my search for something concerning this.

    Reply

  7. Joie

    August 29, 2012 at 11:05 pm

    Hi there to every one, the contents present at this web
    page are actually amazing for people knowledge, well, keep up the nice work fellows.

    Reply

Leave a Reply