Doctors don’t care about online reviews

02.02.2010 11:19

New study shows: Many doctors don't know what is written about them

The majority of practicing doctors do not know whether they have already been rated on doctor rating portals on the Internet. This was determined by the Health Foundation in its study “Doctors in the future health market 2009”. Only 22.7 percent of the resident doctors, dentists and psychological psychotherapists surveyed stated that they had already been evaluated. One in ten said no. The vast majority, around two thirds (67.3 percent), do not know whether they have already been rated.

The excitement surrounding the portals is therefore far greater than the doctors themselves realize. Dr. Peter Müller, board member of the Health Foundation, says: “Those actually affected react much more relaxed than the representatives of the medical self-administration.” The vast majority of doctors also seem to be honest when it comes to the rating portals. When asked “Have you ever encouraged employees or acquaintances to give you some positive reviews?” no one answered “yes,” even though it was an anonymous study. Only two percent said: “I tend to agree.” 80 percent rejected this, the remaining 18 percent answered “neither nor”.

The representative study was carried out by the Society for Health Market Analysis (www.ggma.de) on behalf of the Health Foundation. The results are based on the answer sets of 1,131 representatively selected practicing doctors, dentists and psychological psychotherapists. The short version of the study is available online at www.stiftung-gesundheit.de/forschung/studien.htm