The future of healthcare is consumer driven with a focus on outcome metrics and patient feedback. Physician review websites have grown in popularity and are guiding patients to certain healthcare providers, for better or worse. No prior study has specifically evaluated internet reviews of spine surgeons, determined if social media correlates with patient reviews, or evaluated Google as a physician review website.
To evaluate patient satisfaction scores for spine surgeons in Florida using leading physician ratings websites.
A retrospective study.
Spine surgeons with a review on Healthgrades.com (HG), Vitals.com (V), or Google.com (G) online rating websites as of 08/17/2017.
Number of ratings, number of comments, overall rating, patient reported wait times, physician website presences, and physician social media presence (SM).
Using the directory of registered North American Spine Society (NASS) physicians, we identified all spine surgeons practicing in Florida (137 orthopedic trained; 78 neurosurgery trained). Surgeon demographics and ratings data was collected from three physician rating websites (HG, V, G) from 7/19/2017 to 8/17/2017. Using only the first ten search results from Google.com we then identified if the surgeon had accounts on Facebook (FB), Twitter (T), or Instagram (IG). There were no sources of funding for this study.
Nearly every surgeon in this cohort had either an institutional or personal website (98.1%), and 38.6% had at least one social media outlet of our 3 reviewed. Both personal and institutional website presence significantly correlated with higher G scores. Spine surgeons with a searchable account on FB, T, or IG made up 35.4%, 10.2%, and 0.5% of the cohort, respectively. Surgeons with a SM presence had a significantly higher number of ratings and comments on HG, V, and G, but not overall scores. In multivariable analysis, only V showed a significant inverse correlation between overall score and age, private institution, and orthopaedic surgery training. Wait times >30 minutes were significantly associated with worse overall scores across all three review sites. Overall ratings between HG, V, and G all had significant positive correlations on Pearson correlation analysis.
Social media presence correlates with patient communication in the form of number of ratings and comments, yet does not impact overall scores, suggesting social media may influence patient feedback. Longer wait times are indicative of lower scores across all three platforms. Overall ratings from all three websites correlate significantly with each other, indicating agreement between physician ratings across different platforms. Understanding the factors that optimize a patient's overall experience with a physician is an important and emerging outcome measure for the future of patient-centered healthcare.
This research output has an Altmetric Attention Score of 4. This is our high-level measure of the quality and quantity of online attention that it has received. This Attention Score, as well as the ranking and number of research outputs shown below, was calculated when the research output was last mentioned on 26 May 2019.
All research outputs
#11,461,382
of 34,376,207 outputs
Outputs from Spine Journal
#1,125
of 4,238 outputs
Outputs of similar age
#143,634
of 370,146 outputs
Outputs of similar age from Spine Journal
#22
of 65 outputs
Altmetric has tracked 34,376,207 research outputs across all sources so far. This one has received more attention than most of these and is in the 65th percentile.
So far Altmetric has tracked 4,238 research outputs from this source. They typically receive a little more attention than average, with a mean Attention Score of 6.8. This one has gotten more attention than average, scoring higher than 71% of its peers.
Older research outputs will score higher simply because they've had more time to accumulate mentions. To account for age we can compare this Altmetric Attention Score to the 370,146 tracked outputs that were published within six weeks on either side of this one in any source. This one has gotten more attention than average, scoring higher than 59% of its contemporaries.
We're also able to compare this research output to 65 others from the same source and published within six weeks on either side of this one. This one has gotten more attention than average, scoring higher than 66% of its contemporaries.
