Ethical Principles for Physician Rating Sites
Open accessAbstract
During the last 5 years, an ethical debate has emerged, often in public media, about the potential positive and negative effects of physician rating sites and whether physician rating sites created by insurance companies or government agencies are ethical in their current states. Due to the lack of direct evidence of physician rating sites' effects on physicians' performance, patient outcomes, or the public's trust in health care, most contributions refer to normative arguments, hypothetical effects, or indirect evidence. This paper aims, first, to structure the ethical debate about the basic concept of physician rating sites: allowing patients to rate, comment, and discuss physicians' performance, online and visible to everyone. Thus, it provides a more thorough and transparent starting point for further discussion and decision making on physician rating sites: what should physicians and health policy decision makers take into account when discussing the basic concept of physician rating sites and its possible implications on the physician-patient relationship? Second, it discusses where and how the preexisting evidence from the partly related field of public reporting of physician performance can serve as an indicator for specific needs of evaluative research in the field of physician rating sites. This paper defines the ethical principles of patient welfare, patient autonomy, physician welfare, and social justice in the context of physician rating sites. It also outlines basic conditions for a fair decision-making process concerning the implementation and regulation of physician rating sites, namely, transparency, justification, participation, minimization of conflicts of interest, and openness for revision. Besides other issues described in this paper, one trade-off presents a special challenge and will play an important role when deciding about more- or less-restrictive physician rating sites regulations: the potential psychological and financial harms for physicians that can result from physician rating sites need to be contained without limiting the potential benefits for patients with respect to health, health literacy, and equity.
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The helpfulness of physician rating sites has not been proven.
“Although the helpfulness of these ratings has not been proven, these sites could theoretically contribute to health literacy, engagement in patients' own care, and ability to perform quality assessment.60”
From Social Media and Clinical Care: Ethical, Professional, and Social Implications (2013) · cites this paper as [60]
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Research works printed but not linked: 1
- [11]Carvel J The Guardian 2008 12 30 2011-07-29 Patients to Rate and Review Their GPs on NHS Website http://www.guardian.co.uk/society/2008/dec/30/doctors-rating-website-nhs
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- Authors
- Strech, D.
- Affiliations
- Medizinische Hochschule Hannover (DE)
- Corresponding author
- Strech, Daniel
- ORCID
- Strech, Daniel
- Venue
- Journal of Medical Internet Research
- Publisher
- JMIR Publications Inc.
- Published
- 2011-12-06
- Volume
- 13
- Issue
- 4
- Pages
- e113
- ISSN
- 1438-8871 (ISSN-L)
- PMC
- PMC3278099
- OpenAlex
- W2101178490
- Cited by
- 53
- References
- 41
- Citations by year
- 2024: 1 · 2023: 2 · 2022: 4 · 2021: 4 · 2020: 3 · 2019: 8 · 2018: 4 · 2017: 4 · 2016: 8 · 2015: 6 · 2014: 3 · 2013: 3 · 2012: 3
- FWCI
- 5.34
- Type
- journal article
- Language
- en
- Open access
- gold
- doi.org
- Licence
- cc-by
- Locations
- Journal of Medical Internet Research (publishedVersion, cc-by)
- Europe PMC (PubMed Central) (publishedVersion, cc-by)
- PubMed Central (publishedVersion, cc-by)
- PubMed (publishedVersion)
- DOAJ (DOAJ: Directory of Open Access Journals) (submittedVersion, cc-by-sa)
- Topics
- Health Sciences › Health Professions › General Health Professions › Patient Satisfaction in Healthcare
- Health Sciences › Medicine › Public Health, Environmental and Occupational Health › Ethics and bioethics in healthcare
- Health Sciences › Health Professions › General Health Professions › Health, Medicine and Society
- Keywords
- online patient reviews, physician-patient relationship, patient autonomy, patient well-being, social justice, conflicts of interest, transparency, health literacy
- MeSH terms
- Decision Making, Humans, Physician-Patient Relations, Social Justice, Patient Satisfaction, Internet, Health Literacy
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