Online ratings of urologists: Comprehensive analysis

Abstract

Background: Physician-rating websites are being increasingly used by patients to help guide physician choice. As such, an understanding of these websites and factors that influence ratings is valuable to physicians. Objective: We sought to perform a comprehensive analysis of online urology ratings information, with a specific focus on the relationship between number of ratings or comments and overall physician rating. Methods: We analyzed urologist ratings on the Healthgrades website. The data retrieval focused on physician and staff ratings information. Our analysis included descriptive statistics of physician and staff ratings and correlation analysis between physician or staff performance and overall physician rating. Finally, we performed a best-fit analysis to assess for an association between number of physician ratings and overall rating. Results: From a total of 9921 urology profiles analyzed, there were 99,959 ratings and 23,492 comments. Most ratings were either 5 ("excellent") (67.53%, 67,505/99,959) or 1 ("poor") (24.22%, 24,218/99,959). All physician and staff performance ratings demonstrated a positive and statistically significant correlation with overall physician rating (P