Online Ratings for Vascular Interventional Proceduralists Vary by Physician Specialty.

Abstract Introduction/Background/Objective Multiple specialties offer vascular interventional care creating potential competition for referrals and procedures. At the same time, patient/consumer ratings have become more impactful for physicians who perform vascular procedures. We hypothesized that there are differences in online ratings based on specialty. Methods We used official program lists from the Association for Graduate Medical Education to identify institutions with training programs in integrated vascular surgery (VS), integrated interventional radiology (IR), and interventional cardiology (IC). Faculty providers were identified in each specialty at these institutions. A standardized search was used to collect online ratings from Vitals.com, Healthgrades.com, and Google.com as well as online demographics. Between specialty differences were analyzed using chi-squared and analysis of variance tests as appropriate. Multivariable linear regression was used to identify factors associated with review volume and star rating. Results A total of 1,330 providers (n=454 VS, n=451 IR, n=425 IC) were identified across 47 institutions in 27 states. VS (55.5%-69.4%) and IC (63.8%-71.1%) providers were significantly more likely to have reviews than IR (28.6%-48.8%) providers across all online platforms (p Conclusion On average, vascular surgeons have more reviews and are more highly rated than interventional radiologists but tend to have fewer reviews and lower ratings than interventional cardiologists. VS providers may benefit from encouraging patients to file online reviews, especially in competitive markets.