HealthContentAdvisors

Doctors, Rate Yourselves

• Posted April 2nd 2008
• by Janice

Last week, Angie’s List, the online subscription site that is known for user ratings of painters, carpenters, roofers and other home contractors, announced a new service that allows its 600,000 members to rate their experiences with physicians, dentists, pharmacists and health insurers.  Angie’s List joins Zagat’s, which launched physician ratings last fall. 

Most of the press coverage about the new service has highlighted doctors’ concerns that reviews will be biased toward comments that are not central to the quality of the clinical care provided and that negative comments will be difficult to counteract. However, it is important to keep in mind that the objective of services like Angie’s List is to help users find good doctors and contractors. If the site doesn’t meet that objective, it won’t succeed.

How should doctors be responding to the increasing demand from patients for information about the quality of care and overall user experience with certain practitioners? They can take the tack emphasized in the articles referenced above, or they can create their own services that offer information about their qualifications, range of services, and other differentiating factors to help prospective patients evaluate whether they want to make an appointment with them or not.

If doctors want to ensure that the full picture of the care they provide is presented, including the quality of the clinical outcomes, they are going to have to get in the game and help create information services that complete the picture. They and other healthcare providers should keep in mind that the visitors to these healthcare directory sites are prospective new patients who are seeking a new practitioner—what marketers would call prospects! And just like in other markets, one size does not fill all in healthcare. Preferences for doctors vary just like preferences for cars vary. It is incumbent on the healthcare providers to learn some of the tools of the marketing profession to position themselves effectively. We don’t expect all doctors to become expert marketers, but we do expect them to be aligned with institutions that do understand marketing.

As we move down the road to a value-based system of healthcare services in the US, we predict that there will be an increasing number of marketing services companies that will help physicians and other healthcare providers understand how to market themselves. Xoova and Alijor represent a couple of new companies that offer a platform where doctors can market themselves on the Web. Expect to see many more entrants leverage the advantages of infocommerce to help buyers and sellers of healthcare services make better informed purchasing decisions.