Are you a 5-star pediatrician?

As patient review websites are being increasingly used by patients and caregivers, and have been shown to influence patient selection and providers, Skylar M. Hess, a medical student at the Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai in New York City shared an AI study of a physician review website, which is, “to our knowledge, the first study utilizing machine learning to quantitatively analyze online reviews of pediatricians,” observed Hess.

The researchers used healthgrades.com to search out pediatrician profiles, as that site was one of the first medical reviewer websites, and remains one of most popular. Nearly 5700 pediatrician reviews were selected.

The top 3 most-used words for positively reviewing a caregiver were “care,” “love,” and “kind,” while the top 3 negative words were “rude,” also “care,” and “unprofessional.” Other positive words included “comfortable” and “knowledgeable,” and additional negative words were “pain” and “wait.” Because the mechanism of the study did not search for words within context, researchers could only hypothesize on why, for example, the word “care” was used both positively and negatively, such as “lots of care,” or “really care,” vs “doesn’t care” or “indifferent care,” noted Hess. (Other words, such as “pain” also showed up on both positive and negative reviews.)

These results can provide insights to pediatricians for what families and caregivers prioritize when it comes to receiving health care for their children and adolescents.

Reference
Hess S, Cho S, Kim J. What makes a 5-star pediatrician? A sentiment analysis of online physician reviews. PAS 2022. April 23, 2022. Denver, Colorado.