The insurance company WellPoint has teamed with Zagat to survey the attitudes of its subscribers toward the doctors they have used. The patients rate their doctors in four broad categories, and can add comments if they wish.
The end result will be a composite score for individual physicians indicating where they rank on a scale from poor to extraordinary.
The idea of patient-based ratings has angered some doctors, who say that patients are in no position to judge which doctors are best, and that some patients may respond to glib charm rather than professional competence.
However, the items covered in the Zagat/WellPoint survey tend to focus less on medical care and more on the quality of service -- whether it is easy or hard to make appointments, whether patients are dealt with on time or kept waiting for hours, and whether the staff is helpful, for example.