05
July
2018
|
07:00 AM
America/New_York

The Reasons You Shouldn't Always Trust Online Doctor Reviews

Prevention featured HSS sports medicine surgeon Anil S. Ranawat, MD, in an article about his study on physician-rating websites.

According to the article, Dr. Ranawat and a team of scientists compared the ratings of 275 randomly selected sports medicine doctors on three popular review sites and found little correlation between the sites. Often, a doctor could have five stars on one site and two stars on another.

"If people pick their physician solely based on online reviews and their insurance, there's a good chance they won't be satisfied," said Dr. Ranawat, lead author of the study.  

Dr. Ranawat noted that there is a long list of potential biases, such as office décor, that can affect a person's ability to write fair reviews.

Based on the results of his study, Dr. Ranawat also found that younger doctors tend to have significantly higher ratings than their older peers.

Read the full article at prevention.com. This also appeared in the July 2018 print issue.