JMIR Publications

ABSTRACT

Background:

Some hospitals’ and health systems’ websites report physician-level ratings and comments drawn from the Consumer Assessment of Healthcare Providers and Systems (CAHPS) surveys.

Objective:

To examine the prevalence and content of health system websites reporting these data and compare narratives from these sites to narratives from commercial physician rating sites.

Methods:

We identified health system websites active between June 1, 2016 and June 30, 2016 that posted clinician reviews. For 140 randomly-selected clinicians, we extracted the number of star ratings and narrative comments. We conducted a qualitative analysis of a random sample of these physicians’ narrative reviews and compared to a random sample from commercial physician rating websites. We described composite quantitative scores for sampled physicians and compared frequency of themes between reviews drawn from health system and commercial physician rating websites.

Results:

We identified 42 health systems that published composite star ratings (n=42, 100%) or narratives (n=33, 79%). Most (n=27, 64%) stated that they excluded narratives deemed offensive. Of 140 clinicians, a majority had composite scores listed: (“star ratings,” n=122, 87%; narrative reviews, n = 114, 81%), with a median of 110 star ratings and 25 narratives. The median (IQR) rating was 4.8 (4.7 – 4.9) out of 5 stars and no clinician had a score below 4.2. Compared to commercial physician rating websites, we found significantly fewer negative comments on health system websites (36% vs. 13%, respectively, P<0.001).

Conclusions:

The lack of variation in star ratings on health system sites may make it difficult to differentiate between clinicians. Most health systems report that they remove “offensive” comments, and we notably found fewer negative comments on health system websites compared to commercial physician rating sites.