The determinants of patients’ opinions about physicians’ services in the Internet-based ranking site

Abstract

Abstract Background The rankings of physicians’ services constructed on the basis of the feedback from patients became a popular form of the appraisal of their work. The main objective of the study was the assessment of predictors of the patients’ satisfaction with services provided by physicians of selected specialities. Methods The opinions about physicians of three specialties (paediatricians (P), gynaecologists (G) and family medicine physicians (FM)) who accumulated the highest numbers of opinions, were extracted from the rankinglekarzy.pl website. Only 100 physicians of each specialty who were the most frequently scored were included. Apart from the scores on six individual criteria, the data reflecting the number of opinions (NOO), the type of medical practice (TMP), number of specialties (NS) and PhD title (PhD), as well as the location of the practice (LOP) were collected. The total score was calculated as the sum of scores assigned to individual criteria. Results The final data set consisted of 9482 opinions (4234 for P, 2057 for FM, and 3191 for G). The multivariate regression model revealed that odds of obtaining the maximum total score (MTS) depended on S, NOO, LOP, and TMP. G had higher odds of receiving the MTS than P and FM (OR, 95%CI, 0.75, 0.68-0.83, and 0.72, 0.64-0.82, respectively). MTS was less frequently received by physicians practicing in medical centres (0.56, 0.49-0.62) and hospitals (0.55; 0.44-0.70) than in private practices, but not by those practicing in more than one place (3.81, 2.78-4.21). Higher NOO was related to lower odds of receiving MTS (0.992; 0.990-0.995). Conclusions There are significant differences in patients’ assessment of services provided by physicians of three analysed specialties. The type of practice has a considerable impact on the satisfaction of patients. Interestingly, it seems also that the number of specialties and PhD title do not influence patients’ opinions about the quality of the medical doctor’s services. Key messages Internet-based rankings of physicians may be an important source of information about provided medical services. Key factors influencing patients’ opinions include specialty, the type and the location of medical practice, but not scientific a scientific title and number of specialities.