What patients want from their doctors : an analysis of patients’ online reviews and ratings of their regular general practitioners

Abstract

Understanding what dimensions of health care quality patients respond to is essential in order to recognize how patient demand contributes to health care quality maintenance. In this paper I analyze patients’ online reviews and ratings of their regular general practitioners (regular GPs) from Legelisten.no. A qualitative analysis of the content of 346 reviews is conducted to examine what quality dimensions that contribute to patient satisfaction. Furthermore, patients’ ratings are linked with data on regular GP characteristics to assess how they reflect regular GP quality. My findings indicate that regular GPs’ interpersonal abilities are the most important contributors to patient satisfaction. Patient satisfaction does however also seem to depend considerably on the clinical aspects of provided health care. I further found that regular GPs specialized in general practice received significantly higher ratings than those without such a specialization. Those who had not been given any warnings during the past three years of practice were also rated higher than those warned. These correlations suggest that patients may be able to recognize high-quality regular GPs. Finally, I found a negative relationship between the share of patients leaving the regular GPs’ list and ratings. This indicates that the ratings represent a non-random, relevant measure of patient satisfaction.