Getting a Good Online Rating Score is Easy!

DrScore.com analyzed 36,000 patient satisfaction surveys submitted to the website in 2011 for its Annual Report Card and found that the way to get a good score is when patients have a short times in the waiting rooms and a longer time in the exam room with the doctor.  See how easy that is?  Okay, I will stop being facetious for a bit because the article does make some good points.  It is hard to make anyone happy if they wait a long time and then you rush them out.   I agree 100%.    It seems the magic number is not to have them wait for more than 15 minutes and then spend less then 10 minutes with them.  The problem occurs with those run-on visits or emergencies or crises that no one can account for.  Ear infections can be dealt with in five minutes to readjust your day but, unfortunately, that could be the mom who grades you.   With all the “quality” indicators that my medical assistant has to click on the EMR while checking in a patient, I don’t get in the room until seven minutes after the patient arrives.   That is okay because you would think quality and patient satisfaction goes hand in hand, right?  Well, Dr. Joshua Fenton, MD, MPH, assistant professor of family and community medicine at the University of California-Davis and co-author of the report, does “agree that there is evidence that satisfaction and clinical quality are not correlated”.  Really?  Oh, what a web we weave with this P4P garbage.