Insights into the impact of online physician reviews on patients' decision making: randomized experiment.

Physician-rating websites are an interesting new source of information about the quality of health care from the patient's perspective. This paper makes a unique contribution to an understudied area of research by providing some insights into how people evaluate online reviews of individual doctors. Information attributes, such as review style and review number, have an impact on the evaluation of the review and on the patient's attitude toward the rated doctor. Further research is necessary to improve our understanding of the influence of such rating sites on the patient's choice of a physician.