Accepted for/Published in: Journal of Medical Internet Research
Date Submitted: May 5, 2022
Date Accepted: Oct 11, 2022
The Influence of paid memberships on physician rating websites on the example of the German portal www.jameda.de: descriptive cross-sectional study in twelve large cities
ABSTRACT
Background:
The majority of Germans see a deficit in information availability for choosing a physician. An increasing number of people use Physician rating websites and decide upon the information provided. In Germany the most popular Physician Rating Website is www.jameda.de which offers monthly paid membership plans. The platform operator claims that paid memberships have no influence on the rating indicators or list placement.
Objective:
The goal of this study was to investigate whether a physician's membership status has an impact on his or her quantitative evaluation factors and to possibly quantify these effects.
Methods:
Data acquisition via the search mask from Germanys most populous cities. Data Analysis and visualization with Matlab. Significance testing using a single factor ANOVA test followed by a multiple comparison test (Tukey-Test). For analysis, the profiles were grouped according to member status ('non-paying', 'gold', 'platinum') and analyzed according to the target variables physician rating score, individual patient’s ratings, number of evaluations, recommendation quota, number of colleague recommendations and profile views.
Results:
A total of 21,837 non-paying profiles, 2,904 gold and 808 platinum member profiles were acquired. Statistically significant differences were found between paying (gold and platinum) and non-paying profiles in all parameters we examined. The distribution of patient reviews differed also by membership status.
Conclusions:
Paid physician profiles seem to be optimized for decision making criteria of potential patients. With our data it is not possible to draw any conclusions of mechanisms that alter physician’s ratings. Further research is needed to investigate the causes for the observed effects.
Citation
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