Platforms for finding a doctor's appointment, and rating them, are becoming commonplace in France and Germany.
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When typing the name of a doctor in Germany, there is a good chance that the first result will be a summary from the Jameda website. This company, founded in Munich in 2007, offers a portal for evaluating doctors. With 6.3 million users per month, it has established itself as the main portal for information about its doctor.
And for good reason, Jameda's database has no less than 250,000 doctors in its database. On the patient side, it allows you to learn more about the practitioner and his office (schedules, appointments, therapies, insurance, infrastructure, hygiene...). Most importantly, the patient can give an overall score to the doctor, ranging from 1 to 5 - 1 being the best score and 5 the worst. This note is also accompanied by a review, in the same spirit as on restaurant review sites, such as Yelp or TripAdvisor.
"Patients look for their doctor on Jameda because they want to find the right doctor for them. On the one hand, of course, these are technical skills - for example, they want to find specialists for a specific medical field. On the other hand, these are non-binding factors, for example, if a doctor takes enough time to answer my questions or if his appointment is fast. These and other similar problems can be linked to Jameda through the five mandatory categories and up to twelve optional evaluation categories.
When evaluating patients, patients focus in particular on the expertise, kindness and time taken by the doctor. "explained Jameda this summer to esanum.
On the doctor's side, the system is merciless. Whether you like it or not, Jameda informs your activity on its platform. This means that a listing with your name and firm will be created and probably at the top of Google's results, given Jameda's popularity. A good visibility for your firm? Not so sure! Indeed, it is well known that criticism is objective and that a simple misunderstanding with a patient can turn into negative criticism. But how do you intervene and explain yourself to the doctor?
Because that's where Jameda's business model is revealed. To modify this doctor profile, which you have not created at all, you will have to pay between 59 and 139 euros per month for a premium package. With this paid option, physicians can customize their profile, add a profile photo and respond to patient reviews. The problem, it also seems that during a research, the profiles of the paying physicians are better represented than their counterparts who do not have a premium package at Jameda. As the German daily ZEIT explains in a 2017 article: "One thing immediately stands out in the overall scores and the number of evaluations: The average score of the doctors who pay Jameda is 1.2, that of the non-payers only 1.7, this does not seem dramatic.
But because patients most of the time give "some, a score of 1.7 drowns the doctor in the mass. The company defends itself that these are statistical errors and essentially a patient feeling about the doctor's profile picture, which would make the profile more "credible". Jameda obviously faces critical food supplies on the doctors' side, some of whom have even taken legal action to have negative comments from patients removed. Meanwhile, on the German site, 80% of comments about doctors are positive, which shows a high level of overall satisfaction.