Physician Review Portals Do Not Favor Highly Cited US Ophthalmologists

Purpose: Physician review portals are becoming increasingly popular among patients and often serve as a primary advisory tool during the search for a doctor. However, it has not been established whether these platforms favor leaders of the field; i.e., physicians with high academic rank. Here, we assessed online ratings of US ophthalmologists, selected for their outstanding scientific performance.

Methods: This cross-sectional, Internet-based study was performed in September 2016. First, we selected US ophthalmologists who published at least one manuscript or conference abstract that reached at least 100 citations from 2006 to 2016. Second, academic impact of preselected physicians, measured by overall number of citations or Hirsch index, was correlated with their ratings on two physician review portals: healthgrades.com and zocdoc.com.

Results: We selected 105 ophthalmologists who met established criteria. A total of 78 were rated on healthgrades.com, but only two were rated on zocdoc.com. The average rating on healthgrades.com was 4.2 +/-0.9, similar to the previously reported US mean for a physician (∼4). The rating did not correlate with the number of citations or with Hirsh index.

Conclusions: Highly cited ophthalmologist are not rated proportionately to their scientific achievements. Their reviews are positive, but do not stand out in comparison to other physicians. Additionally, we found that this group of ophthalmologists might be significantly underrepresented on particular review websites.