DrScore.com is the latest entry into the market for physician rating sites, but the reason I find it particularly interesting is that it was started in the Wake Forest University Babcock Demon Incubator. So it's a home brewed web service.

So fare there are a little over 60,000 doctor ratings on the site, which is a nationwide site, not a site dedicated to just this area.  As with other rating sites the real value will come as more people use it, so for it to be of real value the site will need to attract far more users to get a critical mass of data for each doctor. DrScore.com is trying to get doctors to use it as their default patient satisfaction service for a $150-per-year fee, and if enough doctors do that then the site could boost its numbers quickly.

The article in the Winston-Salem Journal about the site points out some of the concerns for such a service (gaming the ratings in either a positive or negative direction being chief among them), but there's a need for more transparency in health care so I think this is a good thing.  Once the site gets much more data they'll also be able to provide some interesting data for researchers and that could eventually lead to more informed health care consumers.  As I mentioned in a previous post about the new "buyer beware" nature of health care in the US this is a necessary step for those of us who are now tasked with managing our own health care costs rather than the insurance companies.