Question 1

What is the DEEPPLANE™ Score and what does it measure?

Accepted Answer

The DEEPPLANE™ Score is a public 0–100 trust composite for cosmetic surgeons, summed across six pillars: Verification & Identity (max 20), Board Certification & Credentials (max 15), Academic Track Record (max 15), Patient Signals (max 15), Transparency & Presence (max 20), DEEPPLANE™ Editorial Standing (max 15). Each input is a verifiable signal from medical regulators, public identifier registries (NPI, ORCID, Wikidata), academic citation databases, and public-source review platforms — never self-reported, never paid-for. Methodology v1.2.0 is licensed under CC BY 4.0, with the full pillar/signal table reproducible from /api/v1/score/methodology.json.

Question 2

How is the DEEPPLANE™ Score different from Google Reviews or RealSelf ratings?

Accepted Answer

Google and RealSelf ratings aggregate patient sentiment — useful but susceptible to selection bias, gaming, and review-incentive programs. The DEEPPLANE™ Score weights credential verification (license registry hit, board certification, fellowship match), independent identifiers (NPI, ORCID, Wikidata QID), peer-reviewed publication signal (OpenAlex, PubMed), and editorial standing (independent mentions) above raw star averages. Patient signals are folded in as one pillar of six, not the whole score, so a high-marketing-spend low-credentialing clinic cannot game its way to the top.

Question 3

Can a surgeon pay to raise their DEEPPLANE™ Score?

Accepted Answer

No. Every input is a publicly verifiable signal from a third-party source — no paid placement, no premium tier, no self-attestation field. A claim-and-verify flow lets surgeons add missing identifiers (NPI, ORCID), but each is independently re-checked against the issuing registry before it counts. The full not-included list (marketing spend, paid press, vendor endorsements, directory premium tiers) is published in the methodology document.

Question 4

Why might my Google-rated surgeon score lower here than a less-reviewed surgeon?

Accepted Answer

Patient-signal weight is capped per pillar and discounted for low review counts and stale reviews. A surgeon with 5.0★ from 8 reviews scores below one with 4.7★ from 380 reviews on the same pillar. Meanwhile a surgeon with a verified ORCID, board certification, and fellowship can pick up 30+ points outside the patient-signals pillar — points that no amount of star-rating accumulation can substitute for. Read the per-pillar bars on the surgeon's profile to see where the score is coming from.

Question 5

How often is the score recalculated and can researchers reuse it?

Accepted Answer

Scores are recomputed nightly from the underlying signal table; methodology version bumps are dated and changelogged. The full cohort dataset is exposed at /api/v1/score/cohort.json (CC BY 4.0), and the per-surgeon score appears as an additionalProperty in the surgeon-profile Physician JSON-LD. Researchers, journalists, and downstream platforms are free to reuse the score with attribution — "DEEPPLANE™ Score vX.Y.Z, accessed YYYY-MM-DD".

DEEPPLANE™ Score

Verification & Identity max 20

Board Certification & Credentials max 15

Academic Track Record max 15

Patient Signals max 15

Transparency & Presence max 20

DEEPPLANE™ Editorial Standing max 15

Qualitative bands

Not included