A new survey of patient satisfaction with radiologists found that most assessments landed at the top or bottom of the scale, with very few in the middle, according to results published online February 15 in the American Journal of Roentgenology.
The survey included almost 2,000 reviews for more than 1,200 radiologists from the website RateMDs. Patients rated their radiologists on a scale of 1 to 5 in the categories of staff, punctuality, knowledge, and helpfulness. Scores for all four categories were highly correlated.
"Studying ... reviews for 1,891 radiologists across 297 cities ... we found that patient responses tended to be either strongly positive or strongly negative," said Dr. Luke Ginocchio, lead study author and an incoming resident in the department of radiology at NYU Langone Medical Center, in a statement accompanying release of the study.
In all four categories, the most common score was 5 for excellent (62.7%-74.3%) and the second most common score was 1 for terrible (13.5%-20.4%). Scores of 2-4 were far less frequent (1.9%-11.6%).
Interestingly, radiologists from designated top 50 medical schools showed a trend toward being rated less helpful (p = 0.073) and less knowledgeable (p = 0.062). Radiologists in the northeastern U.S. scored significantly lower than other practitioners for staff and punctuality.
In the free-text-response sections, the most common words associated with positive reviews were "caring," "knowledgeable," and "professional." For the negative reviews, "rude," "pain," and "unprofessional" were most common.
"In the current era of patient-centered care, patient satisfaction is emerging as an increasingly important metric in the evaluation of healthcare organizations and providers," said Dr. Richard Duszak Jr., professor and vice chair for health policy at Emory University and an affiliate senior research fellow at the Harvey L. Neiman Health Policy Institute, which performed the study. A majority of U.S. patients now use the internet to obtain information related to their healthcare, he added.
