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. 2021 Jul 14:21:101502.
doi: 10.1016/j.jcot.2021.101502. eCollection 2021 Oct.

The impact of social media presence, age, and patient reported wait times on physician review websites for sports medicine surgeons

Andrew J Sama  1 , David P Matichak  1 , Nicholas C Schiller  1 , Deborah J Li  2 , Chester J Donnally 3rd  3 , Dhanur Damodar  4 , Brian J Cole  4
Affiliations

The impact of social media presence, age, and patient reported wait times on physician review websites for sports medicine surgeons

Andrew J Sama et al. J Clin Orthop Trauma. .

Abstract

Background: When choosing physicians, patients often review options online via physician review websites, which may influence decisions on providers.

Purpose: The purpose of this study is to investigate the impacts of social media usage, age, and patient reported wait times on online ratings for three popular review websites.

Study design: Cross-sectional study.

Methods: The American Orthopaedic Society for Sports Medicine database was used to extract demographic information for all listed sports medicine surgeons in Florida. Overall ratings, number of ratings and comments, and patient reported wait-times were recorded from three leading review websites (Healthgrades.com, Vitals.com, Google.com). Professionally focused SM accounts were searched for each physician on Facebook.com, Twitter.com, Instagram, and LinkedIn.com.

Results: 102 orthopaedic sports medicine surgeons were included. At least one form of social media was used by 62.4% of our cohort. Those with social media had higher overall online physician ratings out of 5.00 across all review websites (Google:4.65vs4.44, p = 0.05; Healthgrades:4.41vs4.15, p = 0.03; Vitals:4.43vs4.14, p = 0.01). In bivariate analysis, older age was associated with lower ratings on Health Grades (Absolute difference (AD) -0.26, p < 0.0001), and social media was linked to higher ratings (Google: AD 0.21, p = 0.05; Healthgrades: AD 0.26, p = 0.03; Vitals: AD 0.29, p = 0.008). Longer wait times were associated with lower ratings in a dose-dependent manner in both bivariate and multivariable analysis.

Conclusions: Social media use among sports medicine surgeons correlated with higher overall physician ratings. Potentially, younger surgeons increase social media use because of a heightened concern for online image, whereas older surgeons may have less value in using online platforms to capitalize on an online presence. Older age and increased patient reported wait times in office had a negative correlation with online reviews, which highlights that factors beyond the surgeon's skill sets can influence overall ratings.

Keywords: Healthgrades; Social media; Sports medicine ratings; Vitals; Wait times.

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Conflict of interest statement

We confirm that this current manuscript has not been published elsewhere and is not under consideration by another journal. All authors have approved the manuscript and agree with its submission. The corresponding author of the manuscript has full access to all of the data in the study and takes responsibility for the integrity of the data and accuracy of the data analysis as well as the decision to submit for publication.

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