The Patient Experience Score, Physician Selection and You

CAMBRIDGE, MA and MCLEAN, VA—The healthcare call center profession has come a long way since the discussion of “the best doctors” that used to bedevil physician referral call center representatives years ago. “I want the best doctor you have,” said the patient to the representative. In reply, the representative would defer and explain that the referrals were given by rotation and that all doctors on the referral service were in good standing with the hospital. The representative would provide some basic information about the doctor’s background and practice, but not go further. When pressed to name a “best” doctor, the discussion could become strained as representatives did not want to get in the middle of picking favorites. Nor should they have to be.

Fast forward to today and consumers have a range of tools to use to evaluate doctors.  They may contact a physician referral (marketing) call center looking for a doctor referral (s) and then, before making an appointment, might investigate the online profile of that doctor (s), including patient reviews. Or, if they contact a centralized scheduling call center and have an appointment made for them with a new doctor, they make get off the phone and research more carefully this particular doctor to verify for themselves this choice.

      There is now a new piece of information that can be most helpful for patients seeking to find just that doctor that works for them. This is a patient experience rating scale of 1 to 5 that is provided by the McLean, Virginia-based Binary Fountain, a company that provides a customer experience and online reputation management platform. This tool has recently been implemented by the Cambridge, Massachusetts-based CareDash, an online portal focused on providing a doctor directory along with patient reviews and ratings.

Using this scale has some similarities to the rating scales used for other consumer purchases such as products on Amazon and hotel rooms on online purchasing sites. “The core genesis of the patient experience score comes from a study by the George Washington School of Public Health,” says Kate Slonaker, Binary Fountain’s Vice President of Growth Initiatives.  “It was reported in a patient experience journal in 2015.”

The patient experience rating is shown as an overall rating and is broken down into 10 individual metrics: thoroughness of examination, ability to answer questions, clarity of instructions, provider’s follow-up, amount of time with patient, provider’s attitude, provider’s perceived outcomes, patient loyalty to provider, inclusion in decisions, and general feedback, including the timely return of results.

To compile these ratings, Binary Fountain evaluates ratings on more than 200 sites. Scoring is simply minus one for a negative review, 0 for a noncommittal review and a plus one for a positive review. This is then compiled into averages and then the folks at CareDash further work the data to translate this into a five point scale.

CareDash works to make sure than the reviews that appear on its site are true reviews and not fraudulent.  “We have a proprietary algorithm that we use that scans texts, looks at IP addresses versus the location of the provider, time stamps, and frequency of reviews,” says Niklos Kubosek, CareDash’s SVP, Partnerships.  

The company has two million care providers in its system, drawn from federal government data. In addition to physicians, it includes various allied health professionals, dentists and chiropractors. Of this number, approximately 500,000 have the patient experience scores listed as a part of their profile. It updates its directory every month from federal government data and every day from arrangements with third parties. 

The ratings show easy to absorb composite scores, numbers that may or may not be pleasant for providers to see. CareDash’s customer service team talks with providers, helping them to understand their scores. “We explain to them that the score is a pretty good summation of how patients are talking about them,” he says. “Providers are focused on clinical care and may not understand what people are saying out in the world.”