How much emphasis do you place on patient reviews on sites like Google, ratemymd, 411, etc?

[Mauricio45]

Do online patient reviews actually mean anything? I get suspicious if I see a dental practice with all 5 star glowing reviews and not a single 1-star, 2-star, 3-star, or even 4-star rating. Often times, the reviews are very vague and non-specific in only a single sentence or two. Plus, they sound so obviously fake. For instance, "Everyone here is on their game at all times. It's a tightly run ship." or "The staff has proven many times that their care is the best in the area. I would highly recommend them." And these exact same reviews often appear on multiple websites (ratemymd, 411, google) under a different author which I think it's shady. That makes me believe that the dentist themselves or somebody close to them (friends, co-workers, etc) wrote the reviews for them. I've heard of stories in medicine where doctors actually pay an online third-party agency to write fake glowing positive reviews for them. I'm not sure if this is true for dentistry, but I wouldn't be surprised. I just think it's unethical for doctors to have fake positive reviews written for them.

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[avangusva]

I do not personally trust these websites. If I was looking for a new dentist, physician, etc., I'd probably go based off a recommendation from someone I trust in the area.

 

[Munks]

Better than nothing, but not very good (for both patients or providers). Yelp, google, etc reviews, tend to attract people who either really love their doctor, or really hate em, so there is bias even just in who's using it. And the people who are checking it are most often the most picky or the most wanting in terms of needing to be satisfied anyways (ie "it better live up to the reviews!").

Not only that, but Yelp and BBB and other review sites (besides google to my knowledge) basically extort business owners, saying subscribe to our service or you might find yourself with lots of bad reviews or the like.

To be fair and give some level of credibility, an office with nothing but 1 stars is probably a bad office, and an office with nothing but 5 stars is probably a good office. But again, that is 100% based off of likability of the staff and doctor more than clinical skill, but there's not really any way to evaluate that.

So.. better than nothing, but not very good.