Dive Brief:
- The California Healthcare Performance Information System launched a new website to help consumers find quality doctors within the state.
- At no costs, consumers can search more than 10,000 physicians and see how they stack up against others in their practice area based on a scale of one to four stars.
- The website, CAqualtiyratings.org, is searchable by physician name, medical specialty and location.
Dive Insight:
A physician-led advisory panel created the ratings using data on more than 10 million patients. The data was provided by Blue Shield of California, Anthem Blue Cross of California, UnitedHealthcare of California and the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services.
With the move to value-based care, some healthcare organizations, including have begun publishing patients’ physician reviews as a way of motivating doctors and boosting quality scores.
Whether good or bad, the stories affect clinician behavior, Dr. Greg Burke, chief patient experience officer at Geisinger Health System, told Healthcare Dive in an interview last fall. While positive reviews about a physician’s care of a particular patient can inspire others, negative ones can point to areas where improvement is needed, he said.
Geisinger doesn’t post a rating until it has at least 30 surveys on a clinician, according to Burke, who said the reviews have been fairly reliable.
Tony Oliva, MD, vice president and chief medical officer at Nuance, told Healthcare Dive in 2015 that most young millennials (70% of those aged 18-24) have routine healthcare needs and choose a primary care physician based on recommendations from family and friends—often staying with the family doctor. However, “What is interesting...is they may be doing a lot of the evaluation of doctors for their parents and grandparents."
He stated at the time that he sees hospital online physician reviews as more valuable than those of sites such as Yelp or Healthgrades, where there is a lack of control over who participates and what types of questions are being asked. However, he predicted such reviews will have limited impact on healthcare decisions due to limited consumer trust in the process and limited consumer value placed on patient ratings.