Hospitals Post Physician Ratings

By Katie Wike, contributing writer

Now, patients can find ratings and reviews of their physicians directly on many hospital websites

In February, JAMA published a survey which found 25 percent of patients check their doctor’s online reviews on websites like Healthgrades.com, Vitals.com or RateMDs.com. Now, iHealth Beat reports healthcare systems are joining in by publishing patient reviews of their services on their own websites.

The University of Utah Health Care began publishing results of patient surveys on their website in 2012, including both positive and negative feedback as they were confident “our patient satisfaction scores were really strong, and we had a good story to share with our patients,” according to Brian Gresh, senior director for interactive marketing and Web.

Now, others systems are recognizing the importance of embracing online ratings as they could actually be good for business. Kaiser Health News reports Oklahoma’s largest hospital system, Integris Health, is planning to publish scores for more than 70 of its physicians by the end of the month.

“Our No. 1 reason for doing this is we wanted to be transparent with our patients,” said Gary Brown, manager of service excellence at Integris Health. “We want our patients to have as much knowledge as they can about our physicians.”

Paul Clark, a Nashville-based healthcare consultant, says he expects more health systems that primarily use employed doctors to follow the trend, but not those that that depend on independent physicians. “Most hospitals fear this would harm their relationship with the physician,” he said. He further explains patient ratings may give some insight into whether the physician was considerate and communicated well, but they don’t evaluate a physician’s clinical competence.