Patients living in New York and California seem to be less satisfied with their physicians, according to an evaluation of online reviews.
Vanguard Communications recently analyzed online reviews on Google+ and Yelp.com of more than 46,000 healthcare providers and the 100 largest cities in the US according the average patient rating (5-star scale).
The Happy Patient Index
The Happy Patient Index provides a comparative snapshot of how satisfied Americans are with the healthcare available in their cities.
Overall, physicians get mostly good reviews. According to Vanguard’s data, 56.8% of reviewers gave their physicians 4 stars or better. Only 12.1% received an average of less than 2 stars. Physicians who are receiving bad reviews now have to consider if, or how, to address them.
“From these findings, I’d say that doctors get much better reviews than hotels, restaurants and retail businesses,” Vanguard Chief Executive Officer Ron Harman King, said in a statement. “Another discovery is that you can find happy patients everywhere, not just in sunny, warm places but also in relatively cloudy and damp locations such as Cleveland and Seattle.”
Vanguard also found no correlations between city rankings and other statistics like population size, average income, age, educational attainment, political leanings, or even percent of the population with health insurance.
According to the results, 3 of America’s wealthiest cities are among the 20 cities where patients are unhappiest with their doctors and 3 of the top 10 happiest cities have mean household incomes below the national mean.
Online reviews in the healthcare industry have not taken off in quite the same way as in other industries. While there are a number of sites—HealthGrades.com, RateMDs.com, even Angie’s List—none of them are considered the definitive source for patients to find reviews on physicians. None of these sites have caught on in the way Yelp.com has for restaurants or TripAdvisor has for vacations.
Read the full article in Physician’s Money Digest
About Vanguard Communications
We provide education-focused healthcare marketing with a strategy guaranteed to bring in new patients. Through our MedMarketLink program, Vanguard combines the disciplines of online and offline PR, strategic marketing and information technology for healthcare providers.