Physician-rating platforms: How does your doctor feel?

Consumer review platforms have enjoyed success in retail, restaurant, hospitality and travel industries as a powerful quality tracking and information sharing tool. Consumer reviews of professional services are also popular, albeit different from reviews of an impersonal product or service. Public reviews of professional services inevitably link professional’s reputation to his or her identity as a private individual. This exploratory study focuses on healthcare professional services and physician-ranking platforms because the validity of these platforms and the applicability of the standard review system to medical industry has been frequently questioned. Analyzing survey responses from Swiss medical practitioners, this paper attempts to reconcile divergent interests of patients and physicians and to identify medical services evaluation criteria that should be incorporated into design of physician-rating platforms. While physicians accept evaluations of their friendliness, and office waiting time, general atmosphere, medical staff, location and cleanliness, they oppose consumer evaluation of their clinical competences.