Online reviews of healthcare providers are here to stay, but whether there is any value to them depends on whom you ask, according to an article from KSL.com.
On one end of the spectrum, a primary care physician from Salt Lake City told the news outlet anonymously that his low ratings on third-party sites such as Healthgrades have cost him business. Many of those reviews, he said, are from patients who wanted treatments that were inappropriate, such as narcotics or antibiotics.
"When you read them, they say things like 'He doesn't give medicines' or 'He was rude,' 'He didn't listen to me,'" the doctor said. "What that translates to is 'I didn't agree with them."
As patient satisfaction and reviews play a greater role in physician competition and even compensation, it's little surprise, then, that doctors' giving in to requests for unnecessary care remains a problem.
On the flipside, however, officials at Utah Medical System, which began posting patient satisfaction scores and comments about its physicians online in 2012, attribute that transparency to dramatic improvements in mortality rates, safety and efficiency scores, costs and even malpractice rates.
Maintaining high scores isn't necessarily about giving patients what they want, according to Hanadi Farrukh, M.D., director of Madsen Internal Clinic. She's noticed that her ordinarily outstanding scores tend to slip, she said, when she focuses more on her own priorities, such as diabetes or high cholesterol, rather than the patient's goals, such as addressing back pain.
Other physicians shared with KSL that negative feedback can be an upsetting but effective wake-up call to get them back on track in communicating and engaging with patients. Even with the difficult task of balancing patients' wants and needs, physicians can encourage positive patient reviews by focusing on being compassionate and empathetic while delivering care, FiercePracticeManagement reported previously.
To learn more:
- read the article