Online ratings and narrative comments of American Head and Neck Society surgeons

BACKGROUND

We analyzed online rating scores and comments of head and neck surgeons to understand factors that contribute to higher ratings.

METHODS

Numerical ratings and comments for American Head and Neck Society physicians were extracted from Healthgrades, Vitals, RateMDs, and Yelp, with narrative comments categorized based on content. Physician practice location, education, and residency training were also compiled.

RESULTS

Patient ratings were significantly higher with supportive staff and affable physician demeanor but showed significant drops with longer wait times and difficulties scheduling appointments or follow-ups. Physician education and postgraduate training did not significantly affect ratings.

CONCLUSION

Online ratings and comments correlated to modifiable factors in clinical practice and may be informative in understanding patient needs.

Assessment of laryngologists' ratings on physician review websites

Objective

To assess and characterize online ratings and comments on laryngologists and determine factors that correlate with higher ratings.

Methods

All the American Laryngological Association (ALA) members were queried across several online platforms. Ratings were normalized for comparison on a five-point Likert scale. Ratings were categorized based on context and for positive/negative aspects.

Results

Of the 331 ALA members, 256 (77%) were rated on at least one online platform. Across all platforms, the average overall rating was 4.39 ± 0.61 (range: 1.00-5.00). Specific positive ratings including "bedside manners," "diagnostic accuracy," "adequate time spent with patient," "appropriate follow-up," and "physician timeliness" had significant positive correlations to overall ratings, by Pearson's correlation (P < 0.001). Long wait times had significant negative correlations to overall ratings (P < 0.001).

Conclusion

Online ratings and comments for laryngologists are significantly influenced by patient perceptions of bedside manner, physician competence, and time spent with the patient.

Social Media Use and Its Impact on Physician Review Website Ratings in Hip and Knee Arthroplasty

BACKGROUND

The growth in social media (SM) use and consumer-driven health care has led more patients to rate surgeons on physician review websites (PRWs). This study assessed surgeon's professional SM presence and its relationship to PRW ratings.

METHODS

This was a cross-sectional study of the American Association of Hip and Knee Surgeons members as of June 15, 2021. The presence of SM (Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, YouTube, LinkedIn, ResearchGate, and personal professional website) and PRW (Google [G], Healthgrades [HG], and Vitals [V]) ratings were collected. Statistical analyses compared PRW ratings among surgeons who did and did not have Any SM, defined as having at least one of the following SM accounts: Facebook; Twitter; Instagram; or YouTube.

RESULTS

Of the 2,455 surgeons, 550 (22%) had Any SM. Compared to surgeons who did not have Any SM, surgeons who had Any SM had significantly higher G, HG, and V overall scores (G:4.1 versus 3.7; HG:4.3 versus 4.1; V:4.0 versus 3.8; P < .01), number of ratings (G:36.9 versus 26.5; HG:56.8 versus 38.3; V:45.6 versus 30.9; P < .01), and number of comments (G:24.4 versus 16.4; HG:35.2 versus 22.0; V:21.5 versus 12.3; P < .01). Surgeons who had Any SM were 1.8 (1.4 to 2.3; P < .01), 1.5 (1.2 to 1.9; P < .01), and 1.5 (1.2 to 1.9; P < .01) times more likely to have a G, HG, and V score of ≥4.0, respectively, than surgeons who did not have Any SM.

CONCLUSIONS

Surgeons who had Any SM demonstrated a significant association with higher PRW overall scores, number of ratings, and number of comments, suggesting that SM presence may increase surgeon PRW ratings.

Online Ratings and Perceptions of Pediatric Otolaryngologists

OBJECTIVE/HYPOTHESIS

To assess and characterize online ratings and comments on pediatric otolaryngologists and determine factors that correlate with higher ratings.

STUDY DESIGN

Online database analysis.

METHODS

All American Society of Pediatric Otolaryngology (ASPO) members were queried on Healthgrades, Vitals, RateMDs, and Yelp for their online ratings and comments as of June 2020. Ratings were normalized for comparison on a five-point Likert scale. All comments were categorized based on context and positive or negative quality.

RESULTS

Of the 561 ASPO members, 489 (87%) were rated on at least one online platform. Of those rated, 410 (84%) were on Healthgrades, 429 (88%) on Vitals, 236 (48%) on RateMDs, and 72 (15%) on Yelp. Across all platforms, the average overall rating was 4.13 ± 0.03 (range, 1.00-5.00). We found significant positive correlations between overall ratings and specific ratings (P < .001) on all individual topics. In addition, the majority of all narrative comments were related to perceived physician bedside manner and clinical outcome, with negative comments correlating negatively with overall score (P < .05). Time spent with the physician was the only category in which both positive and negative comments showed significant correlation with the overall physician rating (P = .016 and P = .017, respectively). Attending a top-ranked medical school or residency program did not correlate with higher or lower ratings.

CONCLUSIONS

Online ratings and comments for pediatric otolaryngologists are largely influenced by patient and parent perceptions of physician competence, comforting bedside manner, and office and time management.

LEVEL OF EVIDENCE

N/A Laryngoscope, 2021.

Academic Rhinologists' Online Rating and Perception, Scholarly Productivity, and Industry Payments

INTRODUCTION

The emergence of popular online rating websites, social media platforms, and public databases for industry payments and scholarly outputs provide a complete physician online presence which may guide choice and satisfaction.

METHODS

Websites of all U.S. otolaryngology academic institutions were queried for fellowship-trained rhinologists. Additional well-known and academically active rhinologists were identified by the senior author. Online ratings and comments were collected from Google, Healthgrades, Vitals, and RateMD websites, and weighted rating scores (RS) were calculated on a 1-5 scale.

RESULTS

A total of 210 rhinologists with 16 ± 9 years of practice were included, where 6901 online ratings (33 ± 47 per rhinologist) provided an average RS of 4.3 ± 0.6. RS was not different according to gender (p = 0.58), geographic quartile (p = 0.48), social media presence (p = 0.41), or attending top-ranked medical school (p = 0.86) or residency programs (p = 0.89). Years of practice negatively correlated with RS (R = -0.22, p<0.01), and academic ranking significantly influenced RS, with professors, associate professors, and assistant professors scoring 4.1 ± 0.6, 4.3 ± 0.4, and 4.4 ± 0.6, respectively (p = 0.03). Of the 3,304 narrative comments analyzed (3.1 ± 11.6 per rhinologist), 76% (positive) and 7% (negative) had elements of clinical knowledge/outcomes, 56% (positive) and 7% (negative) of communication/bedside manner, and 9% (positive) and 7% (negative) of office staff, cost, and wait-time. All negative comment categories had moderate negative correlation with RS, while positive comment categories regarding knowledge/competence and bedside manner weakly correlated with higher RS. Number of publications (48 ± 54) positively correlated with 2018 industry payments ($11,384 ± $19,025) among those receiving industry compensation >$300 (n = 113). Attending a top-ranked medical school was associated with higher industry payments (p<0.01) and H-index (p = 0.02).

CONCLUSION

Academic rhinologists' online RS was not associated with gender, geographic location, or attending a top-ranked training program, and their scholarly productivity was significantly correlated with total industry payments.

The Joint Influence of Online Rating and Product Price on Purchase Decision: An EEG Study

Background

Consumers had to encounter and consider product-oriented and review-oriented cues before making an online purchasing decision. It was important to resolve how these cues influenced consumers’ online purchasing decision. We also knew little about how the human brain processed these cues simultaneously, and which cue would occupy a dominant position in neural activity. The purpose of the present study was to investigate the neural correlates of online shopping decisions and how online rating and product price jointly influenced such purchase decisions.

Research Method

Eighteen undergraduates were recruited to participate in this research. Each participant was exposed to all four experimental conditions combining 2 (product price: high vs. low) × 2 (online rating: positive vs. negative) with a total of 192 trials. They were required to rate the degree of willingness-to-pay. EEG data were obtained with 64 electrodes placed on the Easy Cap according to the International 10–20 system. We conducted both the event-related potentials analysis and the time-frequency analysis for the EEG data.

Results

The behavioral findings indicated that products with positive rating and low price increased the willingness-to-pay. The EEG results showed that larger late positive potentials were elicited by products with low price compared with high price under positive rating condition, but not under negative rating condition, reflecting the modulated effect of online rating on the emotional arousal elicited by product price. Furthermore, we found larger alpha event related desynchronization elicited by products with positive rating compared with negative rating, indicating that more cognitive resources were allocated for products with a positive rating.

Conclusion

Combined with behavioral and EEG analysis, our results emphasized the more important position of product rating compared with price. The findings deepened the understanding of the neural mechanisms underlying the online shopping decision process. More attention should be paid to online ratings on the webpage of the electronic store, because negative ratings made a product less appealing for prospective consumers regardless of price. Thus, the owners should build good reputations for their online products, which were fundamental to the consumers’ online purchasing decisions.

Crowd wisdom enhanced by costly signaling in a virtual rating system

Costly signaling theory from ecology posits that signals will be more honest and thus information will be accurately communicated when signaling carries a nontrivial cost. Our study combines this concept from behavioral ecology with methods of computational social science to show how costly signaling can improve crowd wisdom in human, online rating systems. Specifically, we endowed a rating widget with virtual friction to increase the time cost for reporting extreme scores. Even without any conflicts of interests or incentives to cheat, costly signaling helped obtain reliable crowd estimates of quality. Our results have implications for the ubiquitous solicitation of evaluations in e-commerce, and the approach can be generalized and tested in a variety of large-scale online communication systems.

Costly signaling theory was developed in both economics and biology and has been used to explain a wide range of phenomena. However, the theory’s prediction that signal cost can enforce information quality in the design of new communication systems has never been put to an empirical test. Here we show that imposing time costs on reporting extreme scores can improve crowd wisdom in a previously cost-free rating system. We developed an online game where individuals interacted repeatedly with simulated services and rated them for satisfaction. We associated ratings with differential time costs by endowing the graphical user interface that solicited ratings from the users with “physics,” including an initial (default) slider position and friction. When ratings were not associated with differential cost (all scores from 0 to 100 could be given by an equally low-cost click on the screen), scores correlated only weakly with objective service quality. However, introducing differential time costs, proportional to the deviation from the mean score, improved correlations between subjective rating scores and objective service performance and lowered the sample size required for obtaining reliable, averaged crowd estimates. Boosting time costs for reporting extreme scores further facilitated the detection of top performances. Thus, human collective online behavior, which is typically cost-free, can be made more informative by applying costly signaling via the virtual physics of rating devices.

Exploring the Effects of Online Rating and the Activeness of Physicians on the Number of Patients in an Online Health Community

Introduction: With the rapid development of information technology and online communities, patients in growing numbers choose to consult physicians in online health communities (OHCs) for information and treatment. Although many researchers have examined OHCs, the impact of physicians' online rating and activeness on patient consultation choice, which is reflected by the number of patients in OHCs, has rarely been discussed. Methods: A computer program was developed to download the required data. We collected data from 8,401 physicians from an online health community, Good Doctor Online, and analyzed data with Stata. An empirical model was conducted to explore the factors that influence the number of patients who consult a physician in OHCs. Results: The results indicate that the online rating and activeness of physicians have positive effects on the number of patients. Furthermore, the physician's professional seniority and hospital rank significantly moderate this positive relationship. As hospital levels increase, the impacts of the online rating and activeness on the number of patients decrease. In addition, the online rating has a weaker influence on the number of patients when a physician has a high professional seniority. Conclusions: It is important to understand what factors influence the number of patients who choose to consult physicians in OHCs. This study aims to explore the effects of online rating and activeness of physicians on the number of patients, as well as the moderating effects of the physician's professional seniority and hospital rank. Our results have implications for existing health management and e-health literature, and OHC designers.