1 In 4 Patients Check Your Online Reviews

By Katie Wike, contributing writer

According to a survey published by JAMA, 25% of patients say they have checked a physician’s online reviews in the last year

The Journal of the American Medical Association recently published the results of a survey which found consumers are increasingly researching their healthcare providers the same way they would a new appliance or vehicle. University of Michigan Medical School researchers surveyed more than 2,100 patients nationwide in fall 2012. They were asked if they had ever used rating sites such as Healthgrades.com, Vitals.com or RateMDs.com to review or research their doctors.

Sixty-five percent of respondents said they were aware of physician-rating websites and 23 percent said they had looked for physician ratings or reviews to help select a doctor within the past year, according to USA Today. Lead author David Hanauer, a pediatrician at the University of Michigan, says although physicians can be leery of such ratings websites, they are not going anywhere. “We do have to accept that this is becoming a fact of life," he says. "The view of consumers is that they should be able to view and leave ratings on just about anything they want online."

Researchers also found 40 percent of respondents said reviews were “somewhat important” to their physician selection process. Nineteen percent rated it as “very important.” However, many of those surveyed said other factors were still more important than websites when selecting a provider. iHealth Beat summarized these results, including:

• accepting health insurance, at 95 percent
• convenient office location, at 95 percent
• physician's experience, at 92 percent
• word-of-mouth referrals, at 85 percent
• physician being part of a trusted group, at 81 percent
• referral from another physician, at 81 percent

USA Today reports, Evan Marks, executive vice president for informatics and strategy at Healthgrades, agrees consumers should consider more factors than online reviews which often provide information on insurance, location, and experience. He says these factors may be more important when choosing a family doctor as opposed to a surgeon whose experience is more highly valued. Most consumers “spend more time researching and understanding the refrigerator or car they are going to buy than understanding the doctor who is going to be operating on them," says Marks.