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. 2018 Mar 26;20(3):e99.
doi: 10.2196/jmir.8986.

How Online Quality Ratings Influence Patients' Choice of Medical Providers: Controlled Experimental Survey Study

Niam Yaraghi  1   2 , Weiguang Wang  3 , Guodong Gordon Gao  3 , Ritu Agarwal  3
Affiliations

How Online Quality Ratings Influence Patients' Choice of Medical Providers: Controlled Experimental Survey Study

Niam Yaraghi et al. J Med Internet Res. .

Abstract

Background: In recent years, the information environment for patients to learn about physician quality is being rapidly changed by Web-based ratings from both commercial and government efforts. However, little is known about how various types of Web-based ratings affect individuals' choice of physicians.

Objective: The objective of this research was to measure the relative importance of Web-based quality ratings from governmental and commercial agencies on individuals' choice of primary care physicians.

Methods: In a choice-based conjoint experiment conducted on a sample of 1000 Amazon Mechanical Turk users in October 2016, individuals were asked to choose their preferred primary care physician from pairs of physicians with different ratings in clinical and nonclinical aspects of care provided by governmental and commercial agencies.

Results: The relative log odds of choosing a physician increases by 1.31 (95% CI 1.26-1.37; P<.001) and 1.32 (95% CI 1.27-1.39; P<.001) units when the government clinical ratings and commercial nonclinical ratings move from 2 to 4 stars, respectively. The relative log odds of choosing a physician increases by 1.12 (95% CI 1.07-1.18; P<.001) units when the commercial clinical ratings move from 2 to 4 stars. The relative log odds of selecting a physician with 4 stars in nonclinical ratings provided by the government is 1.03 (95% CI 0.98-1.09; P<.001) units higher than a physician with 2 stars in this rating. The log odds of selecting a physician with 4 stars in nonclinical government ratings relative to a physician with 2 stars is 0.23 (95% CI 0.13-0.33; P<.001) units higher for females compared with males. Similar star increase in nonclinical commercial ratings increases the relative log odds of selecting the physician by female respondents by 0.15 (95% CI 0.04-0.26; P=.006) units.

Conclusions: Individuals perceive nonclinical ratings provided by commercial websites as important as clinical ratings provided by government websites when choosing a primary care physician. There are significant gender differences in how the ratings are used. More research is needed on whether patients are making the best use of different types of ratings, as well as the optimal allocation of resources in improving physician ratings from the government's perspective.

Keywords: health care evaluation mechanisms; quality of health care.

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Conflict of interest statement

Conflicts of Interest: None declared.

Figures

Figure 1
Figure 1
Screenshot of the choice-based conjoint experiment.
See this image and copyright information in PMC

References

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