Online Reviews of Ophthalmologists Compared by Subspecialty
Narrative Responses:
Purpose
Patient satisfaction surveys and doctor rating websites are growing trends within ophthalmology. We compared how online patient reviews of ophthalmologists differ between refractive and non-refractive surgeons.
Methods
We used Yelp.com to collect online reviews of ophthalmologists from San Francisco submitted between 2004 and 2012. Each review included a score between 1 and 5 (5 being best) and comments explaining the score. We used content analysis to determine whether comments were positive or negative and to categorize comments into: physician interpersonal manner, physician technical competence, physician general, and office factors (staff, wait time, access/availability, office environment, finances/costs, practice location). We used an ordinal logistic regression model to determine association between online score and the category of comments. We compared review number, score, and content analysis by ophthalmologist subspecialty.
Results
We identified 1675 comments from 595 reviews of 60 ophthalmologists. We included 226 reviews of refractive surgeons and 369 reviews of non-refractive surgeons (general, glaucoma, oculoplastics, pediatrics, and retina/uveitis). Refractive surgeons had significantly more reviews per ophthalmologist (mean 32.3 vs. 7.1, p-value<.01) and higher scores (mean 4.3 vs. 3.8, p-value<.001) when compared to non-refractive surgeons. For both groups, reviews reflecting negatively about physician technical competence, staff, wait time, and finances were associated with lower Yelp scores. However, physician interpersonal manner did not impact refractive surgeons’ scores.
Conclusion
Refractive surgeons tend to have more online reviews and higher scores than other ophthalmologists. These differences may reflect refractive practices’ young patient population, good visual outcomes, or quality customer service. Avoiding poor patient experiences with staff, wait time, and finances may improve online scores.