Third-party payer ratings, social media grading sites more meaningful for physicians

We are all aware of the multiple ratings that we doctors and the institutions where we work are subjected to every year. There is for me, as a Minnesota ophthalmologist: Best Doctors in the Twin Cities, Best Doctors in Minnesota, Best Doctors in America by a couple of ratings services, and recently even Most Influential Ophthalmologists in the World. In the past year I have been named to all these lists, but to my amusement, there have been years when I have been listed as a Best Doctor in Minnesota and a Best Doctor in America, but not a Best Doctor in the Twin Cities.

There are similar ratings for hospitals, the most prestigious being the U.S. News & World Report rankings of Best Hospitals for each individual specialty, including ophthalmology. Each of these ratings relies on interviews, usually by email, with a limited group of peers rating us and the institutions where we work. This is, of course, imperfect, and many excellent ophthalmologists who quietly go to work every day providing high-quality patient-friendly cost-effective care are not well enough known by their colleagues to make the lists. The same is true for many high-quality academic medical centers that turn out great residents and fellows every year while performing meaningful research. So, no doubt about it, these ratings are imperfect and perhaps at some level even blatantly unfair.

Richard L. Lindstrom

Still, having trained fellows in anterior segment surgery for 36 years now, I can say that the residents who enter our fellowship program, having been trained at institutions consistently ranked in the top 10, such as Bascom Palmer, Wills Eye Hospital, Johns Hopkins and Duke, have been without exception well trained and made excellent fellows. We have also had superb fellows from residencies not ranked in the top 10, but the consistent quality of residents turned out by the top 10 programs has made an impression on me. In addition, when I look at any of the Best Doctors lists, I am impressed that the physicians mentioned are nearly always doctors that I would be comfortable referring a patient or family member to for care. Thus, the imperfection is not that the doctors and institutions mentioned are of poor quality, but that equally high-quality physicians and institutions do not make the list.

Click here to read the full publication exclusive, Lindstrom's Perspective, by Richard L. Lindstrom, MD.