Accepted for/Published in: Journal of Medical Internet Research
Date Submitted: Aug 7, 2023
Date Accepted: Jun 12, 2024
Examining the Role of Physician Characteristics in Online Verified Primary Care Physician Reviews: Observational Study
ABSTRACT
Background:
Online doctor review sites have become increasingly popular as a source of information for patients looking to select a primary care provider. Zocdoc is one such platform that allows patients to not only rate and review their experiences with doctors, but also directly schedule appointments.
Objective:
This study examines how several physician characteristics including gender, age, race, languages spoken in a physician’s office, education, and facial attractiveness impact the average numerical rating of primary care doctors on Zocdoc.
Methods:
A dataset of 1,455 primary care doctor profiles across 30 cities was scraped from Zocdoc. The profiles contained information on the physician’s gender, education, languages spoken in their office. Age, facial attractiveness, and race were imputed from profile pictures using commercial facial analysis software. Each doctor profile listed an average overall satisfaction rating, bedside manner rating, and wait time rating from verified patients.
Results:
The average overall rating on Zocdoc was highly positive, with older age, lower facial attractiveness, foreign degrees, allopathic degrees, and more languages spoken negatively associated with average rating. However, the effect size of these factors are relatively small. For example, graduates of Latin American medical schools have a mean overall rating of 4.63 compared to a 4.77 rating for U.S. graduates (p<.001), a difference roughly equivalent to a 2.8% decrease in appointments. On multivariate analysis, being Asian and having a D.O. degree were positively associated with higher overall ratings, while attending a South Asian medical school and speaking more European and Middle Eastern languages in the office were negatively associated with higher overall ratings.
Conclusions:
Overall, the findings suggest that age, facial attractiveness, education, and multilingualism do have some impact on online doctor reviews, but the effect is small. The study highlights the need for further research in how physician characteristics may influence patient care.
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