Oncologist’s viral social media post generates ‘wild’ reaction, prompts serious conversations
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Mark Lewis, MD, is among the most active — and most widely followed — oncologists on social media.
It’s not unusual for his posts to receive hundreds of likes, along with dozens of comments or shares.
The response to a light-hearted off-the cuff post this spring, however, has surpassed even his wildest expectations.
In the April 2 post on X (formerly Twitter), Lewis shared a screenshot of an online review from an unidentified patient who proclaimed “Dr. Lewis saved my life!” The image shows the patient gave Lewis four stars — one shy of a perfect rating.
“Honestly don’t know how to earn that 5th star,” Lewis wrote in his post.
“I just thought the juxtaposition was so funny, and I fired [the post] off without thinking,” Lewis, director of gastrointestinal oncology at Intermountain Health in Utah, told Healio. “By the end of the day, it had kind of blown up.”
Since then, the post has amassed more than 5 million views. It has been shared across Reddit, Facebook and Instagram, and it has been featured on websites such as Upworthy and Cracked.com. It even inspired a meme that has spread like proverbial wildfire across the Internet.
“What surprised me — and I think this maybe speaks to why this is an evergreen topic — is that it keeps coming back around in the meme life cycle,” Lewis said. “There’s something here that continues to resonate with people.”
Some of the post’s appeal undoubtedly stems from its humor, as evidenced by the many clever comebacks seeking to explain why the fifth star eluded Lewis.
“Saving a life is so overrated. Have you tried resurrection?” one commenter asked.
Other followers suggested slow office Wi-Fi, a cold stethoscope, or the fact he doesn’t look enough like Dr. McDreamy — the nickname for actor Patrick Dempsey’s character on the TV show “Grey’s Anatomy” — could be to blame.
Lewis, however, believes that in a culture where people are invited to rate just about every customer service transaction — health care included — the post speaks to a very real issue.
“People have told me the reason they like it is that there are very few customer-facing industries that aren’t rated,” he said. “In the Amazon era, we are all encouraged to think about the experiences we have and are encouraged to rate them. I think we can talk about why health care is — or maybe should be — different.”
Lewis has discussed the post with fellow clinicians. Those conversations have unearthed an important theme: Patient care and cancer outcome are only a part of a patient’s overall experience.
“Colleagues have emphasized that when you view health care as a total experience, your interaction with your doctor is only a tiny fraction of that,” Lewis said. “Even if we deliver on the treatment plan we formulated, things like parking, wait times and costs of care can all be potential for patient dissatisfaction. It all gets wrapped into how they view their experience,” he said.
Lewis has since spoken with the patient who wrote the review and gained insight into their concerns.
“It turned out they were upset about the amount of time it had taken to get in to see me, which was something on the order of weeks,” he said. “The currency we’re all spending here is time. I try to keep it under 2 weeks, but if a patient has to wait to get in to see me, it can be frustrating.”
On appointment day, patients may become frustrated about delays that clinicians are not at liberty to explain. On some occasions, when he has entered the room and apologize, patients have asked him if he had been “at the steakhouse or on the golf course.”
“It’s tricky because, if I’m seeing 20 people and the first person in my schedule is super sick, I can’t tell the other 19 people, ‘Oh, by the way, the reason I’m an hour behind is because so-and-so is in the ICU,’” Lewis said. “We can’t explain why we’re running behind because to do so would violate another patient’s confidentiality. But it just goes to show that there is a notion that we’re off somewhere doing something else.”
The costs of cancer care also could contribute to a physician’s rating.
“There’s this faulty assumption by many people that we get to set the prices,” Lewis said. “Once everything gets processed by insurance, I often don’t know what the final charges to the patient are going to look like. It’s interesting that everything about going to the doctor gets conflated into this one rating.”
Lewis has taken the 5-month rollercoaster ride from patient satisfaction rating to Internet sensation in stride. However, his online celebrity status has provided an opportunity for him to give back.
He consulted his 13-year-old son about how to ethically market a T-shirt that features the screen capture of the performance rating. Sales will benefit a cancer charity.
“He’s very tech savvy, and he was schooling me on how this works,” Lewis said. “A post attains meme status and then all these companies are poised to seize the moment. It’s wild.”
For his part, Lewis hopes he has “seized the moment” by generating open and thoughtful discussion about how the practice of medicine can be confused with the business of health care.
"When I get silly sometimes on [X], it’s like a Trojan horse to draw attention to more serious things,” Lewis said. “Almost everyone goes to the doctor and, to be very honest, as much as we try to make it a good experience, there can be hassles.”
For more information:
Mark Lewis, MD, can be reached at mark.lewis2@imail.org. Follow him on X @marklewismd
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