When a drug is especially dangerous, or even potentially-maybe-especially dangerous, the FDA requires manufacturers to put a black box warning on the product insert. A black box warning is supposed to very explicitly say “buyer beware,” more than just the typical list of potential side effects mumbled by Mr. TalkFast at the end of a drug ad. It’s easy to ignore the wordy mumbling. The black box: That’s supposed to get your attention. It doesn’t mean the drug is a bad idea for everyone, but it does mean you’d better think before you take.
I’d like to see a black box warning on physician rating sites, too. They’re not always wrong, and they might just be useful once in a while. But you’d better think twice before taking them at face value, or using them to make decisions about whom to see for health care.
A few recent studies illustrate some of the problems. One looked at mortality rates for 614 heart surgeons scattered across 5 states, comparing those rates to their physician ratings on several well-known rating sites. There was no correlation at all. Physicians with high death rates often had great ratings; physicians with low death rates might have very good ratings. If your goal is to survive heart surgery, those physician rating sites tell you nothing. That should be in the black box warning.
Another study looked at physicians in California, comparing ratings on popular sites between 410 docs who had been put on disciplinary probation versus docs in those same zip codes who hadn’t been sanctioned. Keep in mind that medical boards do not take probation lightly — docs who’ve been nailed by their board have probably done something fairly bad, and probably more than once. (Although there’s considerable variability, some luck, and politics involved. Good docs are sometimes trapped by their boards, too.) Although it varied by the reason for the probationary status, for many doctors disciplined for lack of professionalism, substance abuse, or sexual misconduct there was no correlation between ratings and probation status. Looking at the overall averages, docs on probation had an average score of 3.7, compared to 4.0 for docs who had behaved themselves. Very little difference, there.
There are several reasons that these rating sites do not reflect genuine physician competence:
- Only people who are motivated to write ratings do so. The vast majority of patients who have a reasonably positive experience do not bother to do rate their docs. I’ve called this property of Internet postings “exaggerating freakiness,” and it pervades social media. The Internet brings far more attention to the outliers than it does to ordinary stories, and that distorts the impression we get from just about every web site.
- How people feel about the medical care they received doesn’t necessarily correlate with whether they got good care or not.
- It’s pretty much impossible to tell if a public posting is true. There are many reasons people write both positive (friends, neighbors, well-wishers) and negative (competitors, those with specific agendas) reviews.
Some docs (and other businesses) are using litigation to aggressively fight back against negative reviews. But that’s not always fair, either. People are entitled to their opinions, and as long as they’re not just lying about what happened, I think it’s best if the lawyers stay out of this. Still, I get the frustration that business owners feel if they’ve been unfairly targeted.
Online rating sites are here to stay, and they’ll continue to rate doctors and hospitals, and people are going to continue to use them. (Google just shoves the rating down your throat when you search. There’s no avoiding this.) Just remember the black box warning: Physician rating sites may have some use, but they can have unintended side effects. They may mislead you into making a poor decision about your doctors, and that’s not good for your health.
Roy Benaroch is a pediatrician who blogs at the Pediatric Insider. He is also the author of A Guide to Getting the Best Health Care for Your Child and the creator of The Great Courses’ Medical School for Everyone: Grand Rounds Cases.
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