Uwe Sander*, University of applied Science Hannover, Hannover, Germany Julia Hagemeister, University of applied Science Hannover, Hannover, Germany Martin Emmert*, Friedrich-Alexander-University Erlangen-Nuremberg, Nürnberg, Germany Track: Research Presentation Topic: Consumer empowerment, patient-physician relationship, and sociotechnical issues Presentation Type: Rapid-Fire Presentation Submission Type: Single Presentation Building: Joseph B. Martin Conference Center at Harvard Medical School Room: A-Pechet Room Date: 2012-09-16 11:00 AM – 11:45 AM Last modified: 2012-09-12

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Background:
Physician rating websites are gaining in popularity among citizens and patients seeking quality information about physicians. Most physician rating websites offer the possibility to write comments about a doctor (patient narratives). However, little knowledge is available whether patient narratives are valuable for patients to identify an appropriate doctor.
Objective:
To determine how often patient narratives are retrieved when using physician-rating websites or Google. We further investigated whether available patient narratives are both frequently utilized and helpful from a patients´ perspective when seeking an appropriate doctor.
Methods:
The three most frequently applied German language physician rating and searching portals (Jameda.de, DocInsider.de, and Arztauskunft.de) were considered as well as Google. The behavior of volunteers was observed in a usability laboratory using eye-tracking technology when solving three different tasks, in short: 1. Find an ophthalmologist for the laser treatment for ametropia. 2. Find a dentist who offers treatments for anxiety patients. 3. Find a suitable dermatologist who offers screening for skin cancer prevention. All doctors had to be searched for in the vicinity of Hannover, Germany. The retrieval of patient narratives was recorded and analyzed statistically.

Results:
32 test subjects (mean age 23 years, 31 students, 1 unemployed) retrieved 446 patient narra-tives. Out of these, 226 were read by the patients. 94.4 % of the retrieved narratives expressed a positive opinion about the doctor, only 5.6 % were negative. 11.2 % (N=50) of the narratives were considered by one of the authors to contain information that might be helpful in solving the task given (for instance a patient narrative about a dentist who is experienced in treating anxiety-patients). Numbers of helpful narratives differed significantly between the three physician groups, 23.4 % of the narratives about ophthalmologists, 12.1 % of the narratives about dentists, and 2.1 % of narratives about dermatologist, respectively. 23 (5.2 %) narratives led the study group volunteers to select an appropriate doctor. Again, numbers varied between the three physician groups (ophthalmologists: 14.9 %, dentists: 3.9 %, dermatologists: 0.7%, respectively).
How many doctors were retrieves by the volunteers? They identified 279 appropriate doctors for the given tasks. Of these, 23 (8.2%) were retrieved after reading a patient narrative. How-ever, retrieval rates differed depending on tasks and portals. For instance: when using Jameda or Docinsider, 53.8 % of ophthalmologists were retrieved after reading a helpful patient narrative (Arztauskunft: 0.0 %, Google 0,0 %).

Conclusions:
This is the first investigation examining the relevance of patient narratives for users of physi-cian rating websites. We showed that comments about doctors are frequently read. Narratives which contain information that might be helpful in solving the tasks given are sometimes used to identify an appropriate doctor; however, results differ between the websites used and the tasks given. We could demonstrate that patient narratives may be useful to identify an appro-priate doctor.