Patients Give Doctors High Reviews Online

By Katie Wike, contributing writer

Despite concern that online reviews might negatively affect doctors’ reputations, a new study has found most patients who review their doctors online give positive ratings.

Eighty percent of patients check Google before making an appointment with a new doctor. Doctors are checking their reviews too, according to a survey from ZocDoc which found 85 percent of physicians view their own reviews and one in three has checked their competitors’ reviews as well.

A study from Vanguard Communications found doctors receive much higher reviews than expected. Reviews of more than 46,300 providers in the nation’s 100 largest cities were examined by Vanguard which found more than half of them (56.8 percent) had four-star or better reviews.

“From our findings, it appears that doctors tend to get much better reviews than hotels, restaurants, and retail businesses,” said Vanguard CEO Ron Harman King. “While some doctors indisputably suffer from unjust online comments, our snapshot of American healthcare providers indicates doctors in general enjoy widespread respect and gratitude from patients.”

Health IT Analytics reports the results showed just 12 percent of physicians average less than two stars on sites like Google+ and Yelp. The states which gave doctors the highest reviews were California, Hawaii, and Wisconsin.

Vanguard explains, “As medical consumers increasingly turn to physician rating sites to shop for healthcare providers, anxiety in the medical community is growing over online reviews, with some doctors suing their patients over Internet comments.” They continue that in a recent JAMA study, 35 percent of patients have selected doctors based on good reviews, while 37 percent avoided doctors based on bad reviews.