What Patients Think About Their Interventional Radiologists: Assessment Using a Leading Physician Ratings Website

The aim of this study was to evaluate patient satisfaction scores for interventional radiologists (IRs) across the United States using a leading physician ratings website.

The physician ratings website Healthgrades was manually queried for all 2,774 Medicare-participating self-designated IRs. All patient-reviewed IRs for whom the primary "likelihood of recommending to family and friends" field was scored were included, resulting in 781 included IRs. Physician characteristics were extracted from Medicare data sets. All available patient satisfaction scores (1 [poor] to 5 [excellent]: likelihood to recommend, ease of scheduling, office environment, staff friendliness, trust in physician's decisions, how well physician explains condition, how well physician listens and answers questions, whether physician spends appropriate time with patients) and wait times were extracted from Healthgrades. Associations among measures were explored.

IRs' mean likelihood-to-recommend score was 4.3 ± 1.2 (median, 5.0; 64.5% received a score of 5; 10.5% received scores < 3). Mean scores ranged from 4.4 to 4.5 for office-related factors and from 4.3 to 4.5 for physician-related factors. Likelihood-to-recommend scores showed substantial correlations with office-related factors (r = 0.738 to 0.780) and physician-related factors (r = 0.918 to 0.946). Likelihood to recommend was significantly higher for IRs with shorter wait times (P < .001) but was not associated with physician gender or geographic region (P = 0.370-0.791), nor was there any correlation with physician age, years since graduation, or group practice size (r = -0.089 to 0.096).

Satisfaction scores on a leading physician ratings website generally range from very good to excellent for US IRs. Most patients leaving reviews are likely to recommend their own IRs to friends or family members. The likelihood to recommend is strongly associated with differences in wait times.