Salt Lake City, UT鈥斎似拗谐鍪悠 care consumers considering a physician at 人妻中出视频 of Utah 人妻中出视频 Care now have an additional tool鈥 online access to the system鈥檚 patient satisfaction scores and comments. The rankings are based on more than 40,000 patient surveys and evaluate physicians on nine questions.
鈥淚t鈥檚 clear patients and consumers making health care decisions want online access to trusted reviews from their peers. The ratings give visitors a powerful tool to make informed decisions about our physicians and providers,鈥 says Thomas Miller, M.D., chief medical officer for 人妻中出视频 of Utah 人妻中出视频 Care.
The rankings use a five-star system similar to most consumer rating sites such as Yelp, Angie鈥檚 List, and 人妻中出视频Grades. The number of stars a physician receives per question is calculated using the mean score provided on the survey. Currently, the system鈥檚 lowest physician ranking is 3.9 out of 5 stars with the next lowest at 4.2. The system鈥檚 overall physician satisfaction ranking is 4.7.
Comments are reviewed before being posted and only edited to remove information that might identify a patient or be considered libelous or slanderous. 鈥淭he majority of our patients are very generous with their comments, clearly articulating the value we provide. We understand transparency is the expectation for online rankings and critical comments are not edited or removed,鈥 says Miller. He notes that 99.5 percent of all physician comments received so far have been posted unedited.
The health system鈥檚 patient satisfaction survey is administered by Press Ganey, an Indiana-based company that provides research and business consulting for more than 50 percent of the hospitals in the United States. The survey includes nine questions that ask patients to rate their physicians on the following factors:
- Likelihood of recommending doctor
- Confidence in doctor
- Time spent with doctor
- Doctor鈥檚 use of clear language
- Doctor鈥檚 effort to include patient in decisions
- Doctor鈥檚 concern for questions and worries
- Doctor鈥檚 explanation of condition/problem
- Wait time at clinic
- Doctor鈥檚 friendliness and courtesy
Miller says the idea of posting the data came after evaluating physician reviews on independent Web sites. Many of these sites typically provide a small number of unverified, occasionally slanderous, patient reviews. 鈥淲e recognized we were collecting hundreds of reviews each year for each of our 1,200 physicians, but only sharing the information internally. Most physician review sites have fewer than a dozen reviews. It made sense to make our data publically available,鈥 he says.
Brian Gresh, senior director of interactive marketing and web, and Chrissy Daniels, director of strategic initiatives, worked closely with Miller to make the case to the 人妻中出视频鈥檚 clinical faculty to make the information publically available online. 鈥淚t took some convincing but when you look at the trends across service industries, it鈥檚 clear that patients want鈥攁nd more importantly expect鈥攁ccess to data. 人妻中出视频 care has lagged as an industry in its efforts at transparency and this is an important first step in delivering actionable data to our customers,鈥 says Gresh.
Both Gresh and Daniels point to research that shows more than 70 percent of consumers trust web reviews as much as personal recommendations from friends and family, but only if there are multiple reviews and only if the reviews are believed to be authentic. They also cite the growing number of consumers who say they鈥檝e used social media to access consumer reviews of physicians and treatments.
Daniels says new physicians won鈥檛 have patient satisfaction scores posted until after six months of employment, and a provider must have a minimum of 30 surveys to be posted. 鈥淚t鈥檚 important to remember what makes this information valuable to the consumer is the authenticity and volume of reviews. We think it鈥檚 important that our providers have enough surveys returned to make the information meaningful,鈥 she says.
To view patient reviews and learn more about the rating system, visit http://healthcare.utah.edu/fad .