John Grohol: “People who rate their doctors are likely to fall into one of two categories — they either had a horrible experience with them and want others to know, or they had a wonderful experience with them and want others to know. But most people who fall in between these two extremes and have run-of-the-mill experiences with the doctor will likely never rate, because they have little incentive to do so.”
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I find doctor ratings sites very useful. It allowed me to discover that my medical diploma from McGill University in Montreal came from “une boite de cracker jack.” I now have a site called IrateMds.com about scifi doctors. I worry that I may be an evil Cylon or a Sith lord.
I would imagine this is equally true for
hospital-rating systems such as Press-Gainey. While their sample size is much greater than doctor-rating websites, the methodology suffers from the same selection bias. Yet Press-Gainey insists that the methodology is rigorously tested and scientifically valid. Intuitively, I can’t imagine how random phone surveys would generate equivalent data as self-directed mail-in or web-based responses for the reasons stated in the above post. As my knowledge of statistics is sorely lacking, I would welcome any scientific defense of the Press-Gainey methodology – until then, I still feel their variable survey methodology is inherently biased in favor of hospitals using random phone surveys.
I think this is true for any voluntary rating system.
True, though Press Gainey claims to be statistically valid and unbiased unlike the doctor survey websites which make no such claims.
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