Third-party payer ratings, social media grading sites more meaningful for physicians

We are all aware of the multiple ratings that we doctors and the institutions where we work are subjected to every year. There is for me, as a Minnesota ophthalmologist: Best Doctors in the Twin Cities, Best Doctors in Minnesota, Best Doctors in America by a couple of ratings services, and recently even Most Influential Ophthalmologists in the World. In the past year I have been named to all these lists, but to my amusement, there have been years when I have been listed as a Best Doctor in Minnesota and a Best Doctor in America, but not a Best Doctor in the Twin Cities.There are similar ratings for hospitals, the most prestigious being the U.S. News & World Report rankings of Best Hospitals for each individual specialty, including ophthalmology. Each of these ratings relies on interviews, usually by email, with a limited group of peers rating us and the institutions where we work. This is, of course, imperfect, and many excellent ophthalmologists who quietly go to work every day providing high-quality patient-friendly cost-effective care are not well enough known by their colleagues to make the lists. The same is true for many high-quality academic medical centers that turn out great residents and fellows every year while performing meaningful research. So, no doubt about it, these ratings are imperfect and perhaps at some level even blatantly unfair.