The University of Utah Health Care, a four-hospital, 10-clinic health system, announced it has added an online tool that allows patients to score their satisfaction with their physicians. The physicians will be ranked on 40,000 patient surveys based on nine questions. Utah Health Care claims it is the first system in the nation to do something like this.

 “It’s clear patients and consumers making health care decisions want online access to trusted reviews from their peers. The ratings give visitors a powerful tool to make informed decisions about our physicians and providers,” Thomas Miller, M.D., chief medical officer for University of Utah Health Care, said in a statement.

The nine questions will cover topics such as how long a patient waited, how the doctor explained a condition, how concerned the doctor was for the patient's condition/illnesses, and how much time they spent with the doctor.  The rankings will be similar to how restaurants are ranked on Yelp, with a five-star system separating the physicians. The stars will be calculated on a physician’s mean score provided on the survey, the health system announced. There will also be a chance to patients to post comment, but each will be reviewed before being posted and edited to remove information that might identify a patient or be considered libelous or slanderous.

 “The majority of our patients are very generous with their comments, clearly articulating the value we provide. We understand transparency is the expectation for online rankings, and critical comments are not edited or removed,” Miller said.

The health system’s patient satisfaction survey is administered by Press Ganey, an Indiana-based consulting firm, and came from looking at various third-party sites. Miller says the idea of posting the data came after evaluating physician reviews on independent third party sites.