Physician Rating Sites Are Seeing Fewer Reviews These Days–Flawed Data Catching Up Along With Loss of Value As Consumers and Doctors Lose Interest?

It looks like a group at Loyola University did a study on these sites and they kind of came up with what I have been saying for the last couple of years.  First of all I go back a few years ago when myself and several doctors looked around the sites, dead doctors was one of the first issues we found.  There’s nothing wrong with keeping a listing as those are helpful but the over all grading systems don’t offer much anymore as everyone who does ratings has their own set of parameters they use to judge and give that report card grade.  Now according to this report fewer patients are rating doctors too so more evidence that these sites as far as value have dropped?  Every time I go to one of them I find errors with only a couple searches and the sites blame the state boards for the data but in my opinion, some simple web searches will help all of them update their information.  You can read below where I said six months ago that these sites are getting dated. 

HealthGrades Puts Out Top Hospital List–Time to Drop All the Hospital Ratings Sites As Nobody Cares, Many Don’t Have Time To Read and Too Much “Flawed Data”

You read stories in the news too with major hospitals who get a “C” rating and yet they provide life saving procedures that are not available at smaller hospitals so what’ up with that.  I’m back to my same old rant again about quality of data and the rise of “flawed data” in some areas of healthcare.  Healthgrades is now owned by a marketing company so what does that mean?  Better marketing or better information, and I think it’s more like the first. 

 

HealthGrades to Merge with CPM Marketing–Will Their Data and Questionable Algorithms Will Be Improved For Consumers?

I also said consumers were too busy and that’s a fact as now consumers are just as busy as doctors in “correcting” all the flawed data posted by various sites and companies about them.  It’s a scary growing trend but companies make billions selling all kinds of data they mine and they put the money in the bank and consumers and doctors have to spend time on their own dime to fix the flawed data that makes billions in profits for corporate USA.  I said over a year go that it’s time to excise tax all that sell data which would include banks, companies, social networks, etc. 

We could fund the FDA and the NIH with such money.  This is a runaway train here with corporate USA getting free labor to fix all their mistakes as there’s a captive audience here who is stuck as they can’t get whatever they need, be it a car, house or whatever until on their own dime, they fix the flawed data that makes billions in profits for corporate USA, one of my Attack of the Killer Algorithm posts.  Nobody minds the shop government wise and there’s very little risk and these profit makers found the ultimate free labor to fix their data, doctors and consumers sadly.  I only got in on this a few years ago when I found my former doctor who had been dead for 8 years still listed as seeing new patients and the AMA and I had a nice chat about it. 

Here’s some other related information about E-Scoring that gets around the law with what they call their business and you and I as consumers have not a clue on what data they have or have any access as they found a loophole in the law that allows them to do this and sure there’s others who do this as well.  BD

 

One More Good Reason to Tax the Data Sellers– Create Additional Funding for the NIH and FDA From Sources That Otherwise Are Too Greedy to Share & Contribute

Start Licensing and Taxing the Data Sellers of the Internet Making Billions of Profit Dollars Mining “Free Taxpayer Data”–Attack of the Killer Algorithms Chapter 17 - “Occupy Algorithms”– Help Stop Inequality in the US

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Newswise — MAYWOOD, Il. - Millions of Americans read physician ratings on websites such as Healthgrades.com, but such ratings are based on scores from an average of only 2.4 patients, a Loyola University Medical Center study has found.

The study of 500 randomly selected urologists found that 79.6 percent of physicians were rated by at least one of the 10 free physician-review websites researchers examined. Eighty-six percent of physicians had positive ratings, with 36 percent receiving highly positive ratings. Healthgrades had the most physician ratings.

Healthgrades posted reviews on 54 percent of physicians, followed in order by Vitals.com, 45 percent of physicians; Avvo.com, 39 percent; RateMDs.com, 25 percent; Drscore, 13 percent; Revolutionhealth.com, 5 percent; Kudzu.com and Healthcarereviews.com, 1 percent; and Zocdoc.com and Yelp.com, less than 1 percent.

http://www.newswise.com/articles/physician-rating-websites-rely-on-few-patient-reviews