Zagat, WellPoint To Allow Consumers To Rank Physicians

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The news item below was reported today in the Kaiser Daily Health Policy Report. This information is being provided to you on behalf of the PALS (Patient Advocacy Leaders Summit) Community.

Zagat, WellPoint To Allow Consumers To Rank Physicians The Chicago Tribune on Sunday examined a partnership between Zagat Survey and WellPoint that will allow consumers to rate physicians (Deardorff, Chicago Tribune, 11/4). WellPoint in the next several months will release an online physician ranking guide based on patient input to more than one million members. The guide will rank physicians based on trust, communication, availability and office environment on a 30-point scale. The guide also will include patient comments. At least 10 responses about a physician will be required before any information is posted about them. The ratings guide will not include information on medical expertise and will not be based on claims data, health plan-generated data or other factors, such as medical malpractice settlements. WellPoint plans to roll out the survey tool to all of its 35 million members (Kaiser Daily Health Policy Report, 10/22). Such physician ranking sites provide transparency and are part of consumer-driven health, according to some consumer health advocates. However, some states and the American Medical Association say that ranking sites run by health insurers might pose conflict-of-interest problems. AMA President-Elect Nielsen said, "The integrity of this information can be undermined by a health insurer's corporate profit motive." Rita Schwab, a professional in medical credentialing, said, "They may provide patients with some valuable information not easily obtained elsewhere, but all the information provided on these sites is subject to serious reliability issues." WellPoint says that the site is different from others because it does not use claims data and instead is "solely designed to reflect a consumer's experience with a physician and not to reflect the quality of care they received." Zagat co-founder Nina Zagat said that it will give "consumers the power to make smart decisions about selecting doctors based on other people's experiences" (Chicago Tribune, 11/4).

Editorial The new WellPoint-Zagat guide is "hardly the first effort to make doctor information more widely available," and although current sources are "useful," when "taken together, available doctor information is, well, pretty weak medicine," the Los Angeles Times writes in an editorial. It continues, "If you're looking for a one-stop site that mixes qualitative and quantitative data, including information about outcomes, legal actions, education, specialties, feedback from other patients, costs, relevant comparisons and other tips that rise above the scuttlebutt level, you may find parts of it, but you won't find it all in one place." The editorial states that there are only a few things "more frustrating than trying to get information about medical costs and outcomes before committing to a procedure." The Times concludes that the WellPoint-Zagat guide is "another small step toward making your choice of doctors as informed as your choice of burgers" (Los Angeles Times, 11/4).