Discordance in online commercial ratings of orthopaedic surgeons: a retrospective review of online rating scores

Background: Patients use online physician ratings to select an orthopaedic surgeon. The objectives of this paper were to investigate whether ratings are concordant among online review sites rating orthopaedic surgeons and examine physician practice characteristics associated with higher physician ratings. Methods: Orthopaedic surgeons in Illinois who accepted Medicare patients in 2015 were included in this study. Physician practice characteristics, demographics, and information regarding their Medicare volume were obtained for each surgeon. Information regarding each surgeon’s average and number of ratings was collected from Yelp, Healthgrades, Google, and Vitals.com. The authors examined concordance between sites by investigating how many physicians were given high ratings on one site (>4/5), but low ratings on another site (<2 .5/5). Finally, a multivariable regression model was developed to investigate the association between physician characteristics and online ratings. Results: Two hundred ninety-five orthopaedic surgeons were included in the study sample. The number of reviews per physician varied greatly, with some surgeons having as high as 300 and many having no reviews. Of the physicians reviewed as low-performing on one site, 65.9% were rated as high-performing on another site. Physicians were more likely to have better ratings if they graduated after 1995 (P<0.05) or performed a higher volume of Medicare services (P<0.05). Total number of reviews had a statistically significant positive correlation with average rating (r=0.26, P<0.001). Conclusions: The discordance among review sites for orthopaedic surgeons suggests that patients should exercise caution when using online reviews. As their use increases, the healthcare community should take a closer look at standardizing reviews. Level of Evidence: Level III