Long-term doctor-patient relationships: patient perspective from online reviews

Continuity of patient care is one of the cornerstones of primary care.

To examine publicly available, Internet-based reviews of adult primary care physicians, specifically written by patients who report long-term relationships with their physicians.

This substudy was nested within a larger qualitative content analysis of online physician ratings. We focused on reviews reflecting an established patient-physician relationship, that is, those seeing their physicians for at least 1 year.

Of the 712 Internet reviews of primary care physicians, 93 reviews (13.1%) were from patients that self-identified as having a long-term relationship with their physician, 11 reviews (1.5%) commented on a first-time visit to a physician, and the remainder of reviews (85.4%) did not specify the amount of time with their physician. Analysis revealed six overarching domains: (1) personality traits or descriptors of the physician, (2) technical competence, (3) communication, (4) access to physician, (5) office staff/environment, and (6) coordination of care.

Our analysis shows that patients who have been with their physician for at least 1 year write positive reviews on public websites and focus on physician attributes.