Do online reviews diminish physician authority? The case of cosmetic surgery in the U.S.

• Studies effect of online reviews on physician authority in cosmetic surgery.
• Identifies reputation as an understudied element of physician authority.
• Finds a discrepancy between physician fears and actual content of reviews.
• Conceptualizes online reviews as assertion of patients' lay expertise.

This article analyzes the substance and perception of online physician reviews, which are qualitative and quantitative assessments of physicians written and shared by patients, in the case of U.S. cosmetic surgery. Like other cash-pay medical specialties, cosmetic surgery is elective and paid for largely out of pocket, with patients having latitude in their choice of surgeon. Drawing on qualitative data from interviews, observations of an American Society of Aesthetic Plastic Surgery professional meeting, and online reviews from the platforms RealSelf and Yelp, I identify two interdependent contributors to physician authority: reputation and expertise. I argue that surgeons see reviews overwhelmingly as a threat to their reputation, even as actual review content often positively reinforces physician expertise and enhances physician reputation. I show that most online reviews linked to interview participants are positive, according considerable deference to surgeons. Reviews add patients' embodied and consumer expertise as a circumscribed supplement to surgeons’ technical expertise. Moreover, reviews change the doctor-patient relationship by putting it on display for a larger audience of prospective patients, enabling patients and review platforms to affect physician reputation. Surgeons report changing how they practice to establish and maintain their reputations. This research demonstrates how physician authority in medical consumerist contexts is a product of reputation as well as expertise. Consumerism changes the doctor-patient relationship and makes surgeons feel diminished authority by dint of their reputational vulnerability to online reviews.