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When editors of Consumer Reports rate cars or refrigerators, potential buyers get sophisticated advice from engineers and technical people who know what they are doing. But when patients evaluate physicians, it’s another matter altogether.

Aside from purely objective material (location, education, specialty), the information readers get on physician rating sites is mostly useless, critics say. One major drawback: too few ratings. Indeed, there is widespread agreement that the more ratings posted about a doctor, the more accurate the picture of the physician’s performance.

Some physicians are so incensed by what they call the unfairness of the ratings that they are asking patients to sign waivers—critics call them gag orders—promising not to post any reviews. And a few doctors reportedly give bribes or discounts for good reviews.

Yet physician ratings could turn out to be even more important than user ratings for the latest coffeemaker or family car.

As medical consumers, we want the best care for our money. In addition, experts say, health insurance carriers want the best physicians delivering the most efficient care at the lowest cost. And physicians themselves want to know about other physicians, how they’re handling swelling streams of patients and what those patients think of them.

More websites rating doctors

Accordingly, the list-makers who rate physicians are arming to do battle—meaning, in their argot, to grab eyeballs, advertisers or even fees. The biggest players are Angie’s List, RateMDs, HealthGrades, Vitals and Vimo.

In all, there are more than 30 sites that compile patient opinions in various formats and put them on display, according to a 2008 report by Ruth Given, an independent health economist and analyst for many Internet companies.

But each site is far from perfect. Because the sites are relatively new, most doctors have just a few postings, and it’s rare to see a physician with more than 100 comments. Moreover, consumer groups worry that people searching for valid, reliable assessments of doctors too often find only highly personal, emotional opinions— from angry rants to fulsome praise.

Are the comments fair?

The American Medical Association contends that these ratings should be viewed with healthy skepticism because the comments are subjective and not statistically valid. “The downside of the Internet is that things are so instantaneous, you can put something down very quickly, and it may not be exactly what you’d want to say in the light of day,” says AMA president James Rohack.

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