Medical Center launches ‘star ratings’ for clinical care providers

An addition to Penn State Health Milton S. Hershey Medical Center's website is designed to make patients more informed about the level of care they can expect. The Medical Center has added independently verified “star ratings” to the Find a Doctor application on its web site.

Many industries publicly share consumer feedback on their products or services using a star rating approach, and more and more health care organizations are also moving in this direction. There are websites that allow people to rate physicians with limited validation or statistical significance to the results. Health care organizations are countering this approach by converting their patient satisfaction ratings of actual patients to a star rating.

The Medical Center's star ratings are based on survey results from NRC Health, which provides the organization's patient satisfaction data. Only survey questions that are directly tied to providers are used to calculate their overall star ratings.

Star ratings will be available for physicians, physician assistants, nurse practitioners and other providers who see patients at Penn State Medical Group outpatient practice sites. Ratings are only displayed for providers who have received 30 or more completed survey responses during a rolling 18-month period.

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