The Online Doctor Review: A Controversy Examined

If you’ve ever read a doctor review posted online, you might have no idea what the fuss is about. After all, everything from oil change shops to microwave ovens are rated by customers online. Why would medical care be any different? You may be surprised to find out that there are many differences. There is a controversy when it comes to the sites that provide a place for these opinions and it remains to be seen which side will win out.

There’s little confusion about why an online doctor review is so powerful. For the first time in our history (aside from legal recourse), physicians are being held publicly accountable for the practices they run. Patients have always been free—more or less—to choose their healthcare, but they’ve seldom had any decent way to make that choice. Sure, most people could find another physician to make a referral or had a coworker on whom they could rely for a recommendation, but those were rather poor ways of coming to a conclusion. The sample data was far too limited. Today, that time is over. With online opinions and ratings, anyone can find out what the general consensus is on a particular practice. They can then use that information to decide whether or not they want to patronize that clinic, hospital, or private office.

It’s difficult at first to see why this could possibly be a bad thing. But there are some legitimate concerns about the doctor review sites. For one thing, reviewing a physician isn’t quite the same as reviewing a movie or a microwave. In the case of a movie, it’s all about personal opinion and the people reading the write-up understand that. In the case of a microwave—well, it either works well or it doesn’t. When casting your opinion on a physician, it’s a little more complicated than that. Most laymen will not have much of a grasp on the complexities that come with medical evaluation. Giving a physician a poor rating because you didn’t get the medication you hoped for isn’t really doing the community much good.

Still, as can be seen from a publicly edited website like Wikipedia, these things tend to come out all right in the end. With more participation, the purpose of such sites begins to shine through and those physicians that are providing quality care will gradually rise to the top. As a reader, you must understand that one or two ratings one way or the other really doesn’t say much of anything. If you want to bypass the controversy and use these sites for their intended purpose, wait until a physician has at least five to ten ratings before making any judgments.