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A nonprofit called Consumers’ Checkbook is launching the latest effort to let patients rate their doctors. It’s hardly the first entrant in the space. Among others, WellPoint is working with the restaurant-raters Zagat. And various efforts by health plans to rate doctors have run into a lot of static, resulting last year in an agreement on a framework for such quality rankings.

But the nonprofit group’s president, Robert Krughoff, argues his effort’s got some special ingredients that should set it apart — and disarm the objections that many doctors have to such programs. Consumers’ Checkbook got names of members from Aetna, Cigna and UnitedHealth, as well as some Blue Cross Blue Shield plans, then surveyed them about their doctors. The rankings will only be used if the group gets a significant number of responses for a particular doctor (the average was 58 in Kansas City, for instance). The questions were developed by the Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality. And doctors were allowed to review their results before they were posted publicly, a key concession to physician queasiness with the whole concept of patient ratings.

The Consumers’ Checkbook initiative is only kicking off in three areas — Memphis and Denver in addition to Kansas City. But it aims to start surveying people who see doctors based in Manhattan later this year, which should raise its profile when media members start getting quizzed about their physicians.

Bonus Checkbook: This is the same group that sued to get access to Medicare data on individual doctors. The group lost its case on appeal and did not get the data.

Illustration: Getty Images

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New Online Doctor Rating Site Treads Carefully