JMIR Publications

ABSTRACT

Background:

Physician rating websites (PRWs) are another sign of the growing digitalisation of the patient-health professional relationship and raise a number of important ethical and communication issues. International research has indicated that a key shortcoming of PRWs is insufficient ratings. However, there has been limited research conducted on PRWs in Switzerland to date.

Objective:

To examine the frequency of quantitative and qualitative ratings on Swiss PRWs.

Methods:

In November 2017, a random stratified sample of 966 physicians was generated from the regions of Zürich and Geneva. Every selected physician was searched for on four rating websites (okdoc, docapp, medicosearch and google) between November 2017 and July 2018 and it was recorded whether the physician could be identified and the physician´s quantitative and qualitative ratings. In addition, Alexa Internet was used to examine visitors to PRWs, compared with other websites.

Results:

Overall, the portion of physicians able to be identified on PRWs ranged from 42.4% on okdoc to 87.3% on docapp. Of the identifiable physicians, few of the selected physicians had been rated quantitatively (4.5% on docapp to 49.8% on google) or qualitatively (4.5% on docapp to 31.2% on google) at least once. Rated physicians also had on average a low number of quantitative (1.47 ratings on okdoc to 3.74 rating on google) and qualitative (1.23 comment on okdoc to 3.03 comments on google) ratings. All three websites allowing ratings used the same rating scale (1-5 stars) and had a very positive average rating: docapp (4.71), medicosearch (4.69), and google (4.41). There were significant differences between PRWs, which the majority of ratings being posted on google in past two years, and regions, with physicians in Zurich more likely to have been rated and have more ratings on average. Only google.ch (position 1) and medicosearch (position 8,358) placed among the top 10,000 visited websites in Switzerland.

Conclusions:

This is one of the first time google has been included in a study examining physician ratings internationally and it is noticeable how google has had substantially more ratings than the three dedicated PRWs in Switzerland over the past 2 and a half years. Overall, however, this study indicates that Swiss PRWs are not yet a reliable source of unbiased information regarding patient experiences and satisfaction with Swiss physicians; many selected physicians were unable to be identified, few physicians have been rated, and the ratings posted are overwhelmingly positive. Clinical Trial: N/A