Comparing the Impact of Online Ratings and Report Cards on Patient Choice of Cardiac Surgeon: Large Observational Study

BACKGROUND: Patients may use two information sources about a health care provider’s quality: online physician reviews, which are written by patients to reflect their subjective experience, and report cards, which are based on objective health outcomes. OBJECTIVE: The aim of this study was to examine the impact of online ratings on patient choice of cardiac surgeon compared to that of report cards. METHODS: We obtained ratings from a leading physician review platform, Vitals; report card scores from Pennsylvania Cardiac Surgery Reports; and information about patients’ choices of surgeons from inpatient records on coronary artery bypass graft (CABG) surgeries done in Pennsylvania from 2008 to 2017. We scraped all reviews posted on Vitals for surgeons who performed CABG surgeries in Pennsylvania during our study period. We linked the average overall rating and the most recent report card score at the time of a patient’s surgery to the patient’s record based on the surgeon’s name, focusing on fee-for-service patients to avoid impacts of insurance networks on patient choices. We used random coefficient logit models with surgeon fixed effects to examine the impact of receiving a high online rating and a high report card score on patient choice of surgeon for CABG surgeries. RESULTS: We found that a high online rating had positive and significant effects on patient utility, with limited variation in preferences across individuals, while the impact of a high report card score on patient choice was trivial and insignificant. About 70.13% of patients considered no information on Vitals better than a low rating; the corresponding figure was 26.66% for report card scores. The findings were robust to alternative choice set definitions and were not explained by surgeon attrition, referral effect, or admission status. Our results also show that the interaction effect of rating information and a time trend was positive and significant for online ratings, but small and insignificant for report cards. CONCLUSIONS: A patient’s choice of surgeon is affected by both types of rating information; however, over the past decade, online ratings have become more influential, while the effect of report cards has remained trivial. Our findings call for information provision strategies that incorporate the advantages of both online ratings and report cards.