When we look at doctors who have a lot of ratings, it isn’t unusual to see lots of high ratings and an occasional low rating. The average score of these doctors is very high. But if you took a whole lot of doctors like that and they only had one rating each, the average would still be the same, but there would be a lot of doctors with one 10 and a few with one zero. The score of those doctors who have just one low rating obviously isn’t representative of their practice. What could be done about this? Well the answer suggested by some people is not to show ratings when there are few or to get rid of doctor ratings online altogether. We think that people are smart enough to interpret the scores if they are told how many ratings there are. When doctors have just one low score, rather than throwing it out or hiding it, we encourage them to ask a few patients to put ratings in. That way, a more representative score is there for people to see. Moreover, we should always keep in mind that the detailed feedback that comes with a low score can be a gift to the doctor, giving the doctor valuable feedback on the concerns of one of their very few unhappy patients, hopefully the kind of feedback that will help the doctor not have unhappy patients in the future.
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