RESUMO
INTRODUCTION: As patients increasingly use physician review websites as their primary source for finding new doctors, urologists must adapt and control their online presence. Herein, we identify factors that impact physician review website ratings, address opportunities to improve online presence and investigate the validity of online physician ratings by comparing their scores to quality measures. METHODS: We extracted urologist profiles from Healthgrades.com (9,902) and Vitals.com (11,670), the 2 largest physician review website platforms, using an automated web scraper. The provider profiles included demographics, rating information, patient survey data and other information provided by the physician. We also obtained rates of surgical complications, Medicare billing practices and prescribing history from public online databases and other demographic data from the 2010 U.S. Census Bureau, which was cross analyzed with physician review website data using proportional odds logistic regression. RESULTS: Ratings among urologist profiles on Healthgrades.com and Vitals.com were similar and had a correlation coefficient of 0.34 (p <0.001). We noted wait time as the most consistent theme that negatively impacted the physician ratings. For those in the group with the highest number of scores, merely correcting a profile and adding a picture was beneficial. As providers accumulated higher numbers of ratings their scores generally became increasingly positive with less variance. We did not find that physician review website ratings correlate with outcome measures. CONCLUSIONS: Urologist profiles on physician review website platforms are strongly associated with the number of reviews and wait times. Targeting these areas could improve their online presence. However online reviews do not correspond to surgical quality.