16/08/2010 Part II: Patient’s Perspective: Rating Your Physician & Word-of-Mouth still No. 1 Referral System

Social media is no longer a trend for marketers; it is a reality for all of us; including physicians, hospitals, and insurers.

Globally: Active unique audience to social networks=314.5 million (Feb. 2010).  U.S. = 50% of SocNet traffic. (Nielsen Mar 22, 2010). And get this: About 64% of U.S. Internet users will interact with user-generated content this year!

• Dear Healthcare Service Provider: This could also include 'user-generated content' written about your services, which could also impact your practice’s revenues. Below is an update corresponding to Rebmann reported U.S. trends on the topic (April 2010).

Love or loathe them, public Web sites that let patients rate their physicians aren't going away, experts say. (For example, annual U.S. News & World Report’s hospital ranking is now 20 yr-old institution, gold standard by which consumers make healthcare/hospital choices.)

• New: Online map that provides information on doctors you might not want to trust (William Heisel, contributing editor to Reporting on Health, a project of the USC Annenberg/California Endowment Health Journalism Fellowships program.)
• New- August 2010, KHN: “Consumers sometimes turn to independent sites to get a glimpse of what a particular doctor might be like. The sites -- such as HealthGrades, RateMDs.com and Angie's List -- differ in some respects: They may or may not permit anonymous comments, for example, or charge a fee. But they all provide a forum for people to learn what other consumers have to say about specific physicians.”
• "....more than 40 websites, mostly anonymous, including Yelp.com, DrScore.com. Biggest problem with these sites: “You're not sure who is evaluating you: a real patient, a competitor, a disgruntled employee or other anonymous source." Dr. Jeffrey Segal: “The Internet is here to stay." "The question is, how can we persuade (ranking) sites to be accountable...?"  James A. Zalla, M.D: “It's an opportunity to maintain the quality of care we like in a relatively inexpensive way".

Net sum:  KHN: “The majority of consumers don’t do any research, suggesting that insurer-pushed health-plan rating sites may face a difficult task getting consumers to use them. In a 2008 survey by researchers at the Center for Studying Health System Change, half of the respondents said they relied on friends or relatives to choose a primary-care physician.”

Future: Location-based. Geo-locational apps and social networks such as Foursquare. In case of emergency-say, root canal: Does your dental office pop up nearest the cell phone owner who is in acute dental care need? Is your patient connected to your iPhone? She is definitely connected to her best friend via her smartphone…
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