A new study suggests that roughly two-thirds of patients choose their doctors based on online ratings.
Researchers from the University of Michigan Medical School in Ann Arbor led by David Hanauer, M.D. discovered that online ratings and reviews about doctors play an important role in patient's decision to choose a physician.
In the study, researchers interviewed 2,100 adults and found that approximately 67 percent are familiar with websites like RateMDs.com and Healthgrades.com. Additionally, 25 percent of the participants have used the sites last year.
Among those who have used the site, 35 percent chose a doctor based on good ratings, while about 37 percent do not like doctors with poor ratings.
HealthGrades, which has 250 million visits per year, is different from the usual online rating sites for restaurants and clubs, like Yelp and Foursquare. With the site, users will need to fill out a standard patient satisfactory survey that asks things about how easy it is to get an appointment, approach of the doctor's staff, and the physician's communication skills.
Along with the objective information, other things that will be posted on a doctor's page are his licenses, board certifications, and hospital affiliations taken from government data, said Evan Marks, the company's executive vice-president for informatics and strategy.
"It's a very comprehensive compendium of information," Marks said to HealthDay. However, he added, "I don't think anyone should base a decision on patient ratings alone."
Though the survey showed that a number of people are reliant on these websites in choosing a doctor, "we don't really know how trustworthy the ratings on these sites are," said Hanauer to Healthday.
Ritu Agarwal, director of the Center for Health Information and Decision Systems at the University of Maryland in College Park, agreed that though considering patient ratings can be a useful piece in choosing a doctor, it must not be their sole basis.
This study was published in the Feb. 19 issue of the Journal of the American Medical Association.