JMIR Publications

ABSTRACT

Physician rating websites (PRWs) are an innovation born of the potentials of the Internet, but also boosted very much by the longstanding policy of improving and encouraging in patient participation in medical decision-making. A mismatch is feared between patients’ motivation to participate and the capabilities of doing so well, captured in the study by subjective and objective health literacy. PRWs are a device people are motivated to use both actively and passively, and in fact do, although their objective capabilities are insufficient, at least as far as their participation extends to judge the medical performance and qualification of physicians. An experiment was conducted that traced the moderating impact of health literacy on the effect of favorable and unfavorable worded appraisals of a physician’s medical competence on subsequent patient selection of a physician. Results show reviews of a physician’s competence and medical skill affected participants’ choice of a physician and their attitude to the physicians involved. Results disappoint hopes that persons with high objective health literacy will receive physician reviews with more distance, more critically and will be more loth to draw any conclusions for their own decisions.