About Physician Comments and Ratings

Johns Hopkins Medicine is committed to improving the health of the community and the world. Understanding the experience of our patients is critical to provide the highest level of care. 

Understanding the Patient Experience with their Physician

Following scheduled appointments, we provide patients the opportunity to share their feedback on all aspects of their experience using a standardized survey that enables us to understand areas of strength, opportunities for improvement, and the means to continuously plan and evaluate the impact of our efforts.

The survey includes five questions regarding patients’ perceptions of the care received from healthcare providers. 

1. Did the physician explain things in a way that was easy to understand?
2. Did the physician listen carefully to you?
3. Did the physician seem to know important information about your medical history?
4. Did the physician show respect for what you had to say?
5. Did the physician spend enough time with you?

What's New in 2025

To improve the visibility and accessibility of physician Star Ratings, we’ve introduced several key features. These enhancements are designed to give patients a more complete view of our healthcare professionals and the care they provide:

• Specialty Star Ratings: Patients can see overall ratings for entire departments, offering an at-a-glance understanding of quality care at the departmental level.
• "Find a Doctor" Landing Page: A single, combined star rating representing all clinicians is displayed on the Find a Doctor landing page, offering patients a quick view of overall provider quality.
• Physician Ratings in Health Articles: Individual physician ratings appear alongside health content authored or contributed to by rated clinicians.

These updates increase transparency and strengthen the connection between patients and physicians, empowering patients to make more informed healthcare decisions.

Why Doesn’t Every Physician Present Star Ratings and Comments?

All schedulable Johns Hopkins clinicians are included in this program and cannot opt out. However, not every single profile will display star ratings and comments.

• Survey eligibility: Surveys are only sent after scheduled and completed appointments. The clinician portion of the survey is not administered in certain settings—such as the Emergency Department, ambulatory surgery, or inpatient care—where encounters are less structured. This helps to ensure patient data is associated with the correct clinician.
• Minimum responses: To ensure presented data shares a complete experience of each physician, star ratings and comments are displayed only when a clinician has received at least 30 patient survey responses within the past 12 months. Results are updated on a rolling 12-month basis. While some clinicians don’t meet that threshold, we still use every comment as part of our internal processes to assess quality of care.