[Websites to assess quality of care--appropriate to identify good physicians?]. / Arzt-Bewertungsportale im Internet - Geeignet zur Identifikation guter Arztpraxen?

OBJECTIVE: Internet portals for health-care provider rating, especially physicians in the outpatient sector, want to support patients in finding the right physician. In this investigation available websites for the German outpatient sector will be both presented and evaluated using qualitative criteria to find out if they meet higher requirements. METHODOLOGY: Available portals for German people to read up on physician quality were identified by an internet search. Subsequently the rating system of the found Internet portals will be introduced and analysed. A test shows the database size of the portals and the amount of available recommendations within each portal. Finally, the portals are examined on the basis of several quality criteria if they are appropriate to identify a good doctor's surgery. RESULTS: The most relevant websites in the German-speaking Internet to assess quality of care were identified by an internet search. Furthermore, it is shown how many physician ratings exist so far. Defined quality parameters for a good doctor's surgery are polled very differently among the portals. Results determined range from 9 to 46%. Thus, the quality of the websites evaluated varies very strongly. Measures against fraud are not sufficient among all portals. CONCLUSION: The lists of questions for physician rating differ widely from portal to portal in quantitative as well as in qualitative aspects. From the comparison on the basis of defined quality criteria it can be deduced that all portals could only provide limited support for identifying a good doctor's surgery at the current state of development. For a well-grounded decision support, additional quality aspects would have to be integrated.

Public reporting in Germany: the content of physician rating websites.

BACKGROUND: Physician rating websites (PRWs) are gaining in popularity among patients seeking quality information about physicians. However, little knowledge is available about the quantity and type of information provided on the websites. OBJECTIVE: To determine and structure the quantity and type of information about physicians in the outpatient sector provided on German-language physician rating websites. METHODS: In a first step, we identified PRWs through a systematic internet search using German keywords from a patient´s perspective in the two search engines Google and Yahoo. Afterwards, information about physicians available on the websites was collected and categorised according to Donabedian´s structure/process/outcome model. Furthermore, we investigated whether the information was related to the physician himself/ herself or to the practice as a whole. RESULTS: In total, eight PRWs were detected. Our analysis turned up 139 different information items on eight websites; 67 are related to the structural quality, 4 to process quality, 5 to outcomes, and 63 to patient satisfaction/experience. In total, 37% of all items focus specifically on the physician and 63% on the physician's practice. In terms of the total amount of information provided on the PRWs, results range from 61 down to 13.5 items. CONCLUSIONS: A broad range of information is available on German PRWs. While structural information can give a detailed overview of the financial, technical and human resources of a practice, other outcome measures have to be interpreted with caution. Specifically, patient satisfaction results are not risk-adjusted, and thus, are not appropriate to represent a provider's quality of care. Consequently, neither patients nor physicians should yet use the information provided to make their final decision for or against an individual physician.