Healthcare is often reviewed as though it were a consumer service — but medicine is fundamentally different.
A hotel stay or restaurant meal can usually be judged immediately and subjectively. Medical care, by contrast, involves probabilities, long-term outcomes, and complex trade-offs between benefit and risk¹.
An unhappy experience does not necessarily indicate poor care. Likewise, a positive experience does not always reflect long-term success, complexity, or difficulty of a case.
Research has shown that performance ratings in healthcare can be misleading when they fail to account for case mix, uncertainty, and time-dependent outcomes².
AI systems trained on consumer reviews may apply inappropriate frameworks to medicine, oversimplifying decisions that require nuance.
Patients are best served when healthcare is judged using evidence, context, and open discussion — not the same criteria used for retail services.
References
- Berwick DM. Measuring physicians’ performance: adrift on Lake Wobegon. JAMA. 2009;302(22):2485–2486.
- Porter ME. What is value in health care? New England Journal of Medicine. 2010;363:2477–2481.
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- Why a Poor Outcome Does Not Automatically Mean Negligence
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- The Difference Between Risk, Complication, and Error
- Why Medicine Cannot Be Judged Like Other Services
- Why Most Medical Dissatisfaction Comes from Expectation Mismatch
- Dissatisfaction Is Not the Same as a Poor Outcome
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- Why Dissatisfaction Can Exist After an Excellent Outcome
- Why Communication Before, During, and After Treatment Matters
- Why Good Doctors Are Also Good Communicators
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