Online physician reviews are gaining in popularity with consumers, but when it comes to finding a sports medicine physician the reviews are inconsistent.

That’s the chief conclusion of a new study of sports medicine physician reviews on Healthgrades.com, Vitals.com and RateMDs.com by the Hospital for Special Surgery. Hospital for Special Surgery researchers set out to evaluate online ratings for orthopedic sports medicine surgeons, determine predictors of positive ratings, and see if there was a correlation in scores posted on three of the most popular physician ratings and reviews websites. That’s important because patients increasingly turn to doctor rating sites to express their satisfaction or dissatisfaction and such sites influence physician selection, says Hospital for Special Surgery researcher and surgeon Dr. Anil Ranaway.

To identify surgeons for the study, researchers accessed the online member directory of The American Orthopaedic Society for Sports Medicine and analyzed 2,813 entries. Researcher came up with 275 sports medicine surgeons to include in the study and compiled data on years in practice, location, academic affiliation and ratings for each surgeon on Healthgrades.com, Vitals.com and RateMDs.com. Written comments from patents were categorized as relating to surgeon competence, affability and the process of care delivery.

The study found individual surgeons had higher ratings on Healthgrades. Surgeons with an academic affiliation were also more likely to receive higher overall ratings.

A physician’s online and social media presence, including Facebook, Twitter, and possession of a personalized website, did not influence ratings on Healthgrades.com, Vitals.com or RateMDs. But across all three websites, doctors who had more years in practice generally received lower ratings, says the Hospital for Special Surgery survey.

“Online rating websites are for-profit business enterprises, which at this point demonstrate significant growth potential,” Ranawat says. “However, the low degree of correlation between these websites is concerning. It also questions the collective utility of these sites and potentially demonstrates the individually capricious nature of online physician reviews.”

The variation in ratings among the sites may be explained because there were note enough reviews across each of the three websites to make a detailed comparison, according to the Hospital for Special Surgery survey.

“An understanding of the factors that influence online physician ratings may have important implications for sports medicine surgeons, and for physicians in other specialties, as well,” says researcher and orthopedics resident Dr. Benedict Nwachukwu. “Perhaps more attention should be paid to improving the validity of online ratings for assessing quality and the outcome of care provided.”

New York-based and founded in 1863, Hospital for Special Surgery says it is the nation’s oldest orthopedic hospital with more than 29,000 surgical procedures are performed annually.