We compare the online reviews of 221 “Questionable” Illinois and Indiana physicians with multiple paid medical malpractice claims and disciplinary sanctions with matched control physicians with clean records. Across five prominent online rating services, we find small, mostly insignificant differences in star ratings and written reviews for Questionable versus control physicians. Only one rating service (Healthgrades) reports on paid medical malpractice claims and disciplinary actions and it misses more than 90% of these actions. We also evaluate the online ratings of 171 Illinois hospitals and find that their ratings are largely uncorrelated with the share of hospital-affiliated physicians with paid medical malpractice claims and disciplinary sanctions. Online ratings have limited utility in helping patients avoid physicians with troubled medical malpractice and disciplinary records, and steering patients away from hospitals at which more physicians have paid medical malpractice claims and disciplinary sanctions.

中文翻译：

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患者应该使用在线评论来选择他们的医生和医院吗？

我们将 221 名“有问题”的伊利诺伊州和印第安纳州医生的在线评论与多次支付医疗事故索赔和纪律处分的在线评论与具有干净记录的匹配对照医生进行了比较。在五家著名的在线评级服务中，我们发现可疑医生与对照医生在星级评级和书面评论方面存在微小的、几乎微不足道的差异。只有一项评级服务 (Healthgrades) 报告了有偿医疗事故索赔和纪律处分，但它遗漏了 90% 以上的此类行为。我们还评估了伊利诺伊州 171 家医院的在线评级，发现它们的评级在很大程度上与支付医疗事故索赔和纪律处分的医院附属医生的比例无关。