Patients 2.0 increasingly inform themselves about the quality of medical services on physician rating websites. However, little is known about whether the reviews and ratings on these websites truly reflect the quality of services or whether the ratings on these websites are rather influenced by patients’ individual rating behavior. Therefore, we investigate more than 790; 000 physician reviews on Germany’s most used physician rating website jameda.de. Our results show that patients’ ratings do not only reflect treatment quality but are also influenced by treatment quality independent factors like age and complaint behavior. Hence, we provide evidence that users should be well aware of user specific rating distortions when intending to make their physician choice based on these ratings.     «

Patients 2.0 increasingly inform themselves about the quality of medical services on physician rating websites. However, little is known about whether the reviews and ratings on these websites truly reflect the quality of services or whether the ratings on these websites are rather influenced by patients’ individual rating behavior. Therefore, we investigate more than 790; 000 physician reviews on Germany’s most used physician rating website jameda.de. Our results show that patients’ ratings do...     »