Younger Parents Pay More Attention To A Doctor's Online Rating For Their Children

A new study shows that when it comes to choosing a doctor for their children, younger parents, especially mothers, more than older ones consider online doctor ratings very important.

Nowadays, the Internet has an online rating portal for practically everything, including doctors. A new poll from the University of Michigan shows that 25 percent of parents say they consider doctor rating websites very important in their search for a child's physician.

The poll suggests that most of this 25 percent are young parents under the age of 30. Even among these parents, mothers more than fathers, were likely to consider online rating of doctors as a very important factor while choosing a doctor for their child.

"More and more families are going online not only to find out about medical conditions but also in their search for the right doctor for their child. What we found in the poll was that the perceived importance of online ratings appears to differ widely based on factors such as parent age and gender," said David A. Hanauer, a primary care pediatrician and clinical assistant professor of pediatrics at U-M. Hanauer collaborated with the National Poll on Children's Health regarding this study of doctor rating websites.

According to the poll, 30 percent of young mothers said online doctor ratings were very important while only 19 percent of young fathers felt the same. The poll also showed that while 44 percent of young parents thought online doctor ratings were very important only 21 percent of older parents thought this factor to be important.

"These data suggest that younger families are more likely to rely on online ratings, which means over time we'd expect the use of these websites will keep increasing," Hanauer said.

The poll also showed that 92 percent of parents thought it to be very important that the doctor accepts their health insurance while 65 percent said that a convenient location for the doctor's clinic is important.

Another discovery made from the poll was that 52 percent of parents consider a doctor's years of experience as very important while 50 percent said they consider word of mouth and recommendations from friends as very important.