The patients who write reviews are mentioning that they selected a physician based on other positive reviews. It also made them more visible on the Internet — when someone searches 'Piedmont physicians' their website shows up first.

Wake Forest Baptist Health in Winston-Salem, North Carolina got on board at the end of May 2014. However, there was controversy around making the data public so they implemented a multi-stage comment review process.


In the first review the patient experience team screens every comment and leaves out libelous comments and those that compromise patient privacy. For the second review, the approved comments are delivered to the ambulatory clinic leaders so they can review comments for their specific areas. For the final review, the comments that were requested to be excluded are sent to the chief medical officer and his team and they make a final decision.

The online physician reviews may boost their marketing but that's not why they decided to implement it. Their goal is to improve the patients' experiences and ensure that there is engagement and trust between the physicians and patients.

"The only way to become truly patient-centered is to acknowledge, identify and reduce the suffering that is part of the care experience," wrote Riskind. "Sharing patient experience data publicly increases the accountability of every employee and reminds providers that every encounter with a patient matters."

Right now, those three health systems are the only ones in the U.S. to implement physician-review websites, but several other organizations are in the process of launching their own websites, and Riskind is confident that many more organizations will be following this trend in the near future.

"We expect this approach will soon become a best practice for improving the patient experience," she wrote.

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