Sex, Age, and Patient Experience in Cardiologist Reviews: A Large-Scale Artificial Intelligence-Enabled Analysis

Patients are increasingly using online reviews to evaluate cardiologists. Online reviews can provide insights into factors driving patient satisfaction. Little is known about the effects of age and sex on the patient experience with cardiologists.

The purpose of this study was to apply natural language processing techniques on online reviews to determine the factors underlying positive and negative patient experiences and the effects of age and sex on the patient experience with cardiologists.

Mixed effects logistic regression and sentiment analysis were applied to online cardiologist reviews from Healthgrades between 1998 and 2023. The results were then analyzed by sex and age to show trends with respect to rating statistics, sentiment analysis, and frequency of 2-word phrases.

There were 100,334 online reviews of 9,461 cardiologists. Female cardiologists received lower average ratings compared to male cardiologists and were 34.5% less likely to receive a positive review (OR: 0.655; 95% CI: 0.481-0.893; P = 0.015). Older cardiologists received lower average ratings compared to younger cardiologists (4.145 ± 0.908 vs 4.348 ± 0.795; P < 0.01). Positive reviews were associated with time spent with patients (OR: 1.383; 95% CI: 1.251-1.528; P < 0.01), answering questions (OR: 2.622; 95% CI: 2.324-2.959; P < 0.01), and patients feeling they could trust their providers' decisions (OR: 2.285; 95% CI: 2.053-2.543; P < 0.01).

Positive reviews were associated with cardiologists being comprehensive and patients feeling a sense of trust in the relationship. There was a difference in ratings based on age and sex with female and older cardiologists receiving lower ratings.