About Healthgrades Reviews

HealthGrades.com is a health care ratings organization that provides consumers, companies and hospitals with reviews and profiles of doctors, hospitals and nursing homes. Their ratings are independent, and they also offer health care quality-of-care consulting and products. This simple guide will show you what information you can access online when you select a physician for review.

Information Categories

• Data on individual physicians include the following categories:

  Physician Profiles
  Patient Rating
  Background Check
  Group Practice
  Hospital Affiliations
  Procedure Costs

Physician Profile

• The physician profile gives you an overview of the doctor under review. It lists the doctor's contact info, medical specialties, gender, any foreign languages the doctor speaks, what insurance plans are accepted by her practice, educational institutes she has attended, if she is part of a group practice, and her state license information.

Patient Rating

• For the consumer, patient ratings are especially important, as they review the performance of the doctor and the doctor's office in areas that patients are most concerned about. These areas include ease of scheduling urgent appointments, the general office environment, the demeanor and effectiveness of the office staff, the wait time before seeing the physician, and several other areas.

Background Check

• The background check on the selected physician allows the user to see any red flags in the doctor's background. This information includes an automatic watchdog notification that alerts the user to potential problems with the doctor in the future.

Group Practice

• Many doctors belong to a group practice. Information on the practice and the affiliated doctors can be useful in making health care decisions. The data included in this part of the review include the contact info for the group practice, the medical specialties of the associated doctors, the average patient volume per day, the procedures the practice is capable of performing on site, and info on any free-standing surgery center within the group. This section also offers details on group-affiliated doctors including name, specialty, years since graduation and any patient feedback they have received.

Hospital Affiliations

• Much like group-practice affiliations, hospital affiliations can affect the overall health care options offered to a patient under the care of a specific doctor. This section of the review gives details on the affiliated hospital's clinical service area, as well as ratings on the hospitals' medical specialties.

Procedure costs

• Procedure costs are obviously a very important consideration when making health care decisions. This part of the review allows the patient to estimate out-of-pocket expenses for procedures performed by the selected doctor. The report includes a detailed description of what the procedure entails, and the cost estimates for treatment. It often lists dozens of individual procedures such as cataract surgery, heart bypass surgery, lumpectomy, pacemaker implant and more.