Insider Pages, which was acquired by CitySearch in 2007, just announced the launch of its new Doctor Finder tool. While there are already a few doctor review sites available on the Internet, most people in the U.S. still mostly base their choice of doctor on the location of the doctor’s office and the insurance the doctor accepts. To find these doctors and dentists, most patients still rely on the insurances’ online directories, which usually don’t feature any patient feedback.
800,000 Doctors – 1.2 Million Reviews
Insider Pages currently has more than 800,000 doctors in its system. To get started, Insider Pages has partnered with HealthGrades.com, which syndicates about 1.2 million patient surveys to Insider Pages. While most of the company’s competitors offer extensive databases and reviews, this cooperation with HealthGrades.com also gives Insider Pages access to the HealthGrade’s database of doctors’ records. Thanks to this, users can also check if their doctor is board certified and has a clean record. For more details about a doctor’s records (including malpractice and sanction records), Insider Pages refers its users to HealthGrades. Insider Pages also allows its users to refine their searches based on other criteria like the doctor’s gender, experience and ability to speak certain languages.
As Insider Pages’ general manager Eric Peacock told us when we talked to him earlier today, rating doctors is different from rating a restaurant. While Insider Pages allows its users to write regular freeform reviews, the company also asks every reviewer 10 questions about their experience, ranging from how much time the doctor spent with the patient to how well they listened to the patient’s complaints.
Privacy, of course, is a major concern when it comes to doctors. As Peacock told us, the company gives users the freedom to share as much information as they want to, but by default, these reviews are never shared on the patient’s Facebook feed.
