A perspectives column in the Jan. 7 issue of the New England Journal of Medicine by Shaili Jain, M.D., described her experience when she ventured onto Web sites that rated physicians. She was curious how patients reviewed her on a number of physician rating Web sites.
One sensed some frustration when she first described sites that posted only scores (1=bad and 5=good). She did not know the basis of her 2.5 score nor could she offer any rebuttal. On the other hand, she discovered stories by patients describing the care provided by their physicians. She read stories by patients treated by a number of physicians, many that she knew, and found a general pattern of what constituted a good doctor from a patient perspective. Rather than ignore the sites because of the simplicity and misleading conclusions from some sites she took to heart the core messages of what patients looked for in a physician.
The internet is here to stay and whether through chat rooms, message boards or bloggers, there will be comments, both good and bad, correct or misleading, about your company. Many messages, even critical ones, could be of value as you improve communications programs. Like Dr. Jain, one can use internet communications as a weather vane to gauge the sentiment of your audiences and improve your communications with them.
