Jeff Segal, MD, JD, FACS
The race to the bottom is accelerating. A new web site recently came to our attention. (We aren’t naming the site because we don’t want to direct any more traffic to the site than it deserves, which is ZERO. So we shall refer to it as thesitethatdeservesnottobenamed.)
One of our dentist members received an email from thesitethatdeservesnottobenamed bringing a post on that site to his attention. How thesitethatdeservesnottobenamed got the doctor’s email address is anyone’s guess.
OK. The details. The poster alleged the dentist sexually molested his wife while she was sedated. As the husband was likely not in the treatment room, I am curious as to how he came to this conclusion. Further, no police report was filed. Nor was any complaint filed with the Dental Board. Hmmm.
Molesting patients in the dental chair must be an epidemic. Another recent post on thesitethatdeservesnottobenamed details a Canadian dentist “sexually assaulted” the patient.
And petty crime apparently finds a home in every doctor’s office. “Dr. XXX stole from my purse when I went to the toilet.”
Coincidentally, advertising on the web site, is another company (which also deserves no additional recognition) – touting the ability to solve such complaints by posters. For a mere $500, give or take, they will get in the middle. They will “contact” the poster and work to resolve the issue. Hmmm – how convenient.
I can only imagine that resolution of criminal sexual assault in the dentist’s chair would be an easy task for a mediator. Perhaps it was all a misunderstanding and the patient, once aware of the details, would agree to a token settlement.
On their face, these complaints seem silly. But, human nature being what it is, not all patients will understand just how ridiculous they are. Some subset of the population will believe them just because the Web said so.
Welcome to 2011. What are your thoughts on this?
A note on thesitethatdeservesnottobenamed.
First, the site is registered anonymously out of the Bahamas. All of the “complaints” are listed under fictitious names with very little detail. The “complaints” are all constructed in a way that would make them attractive to the search engines so that the postings could appear prominently for the doctors names.
Second, the site has banner advertising and a link to a company that provides “mediation” services if you disagree with any “complaint” on the site – for a fee of course. The site that “should not be named” claims they have no affiliation with the mediation service, but of course the mediation site is also registered anonymously out of the Bahamas. In addition, the mediation site lists an address in New York; A quick search on Google Maps shows the address actually belongs to Madison Square Garden.
This is nothing more than an extortion scheme – Another web scam. Don’t believe for a second that paying money to sites like these will get your name removed permanently. In fact, it will most likely put a mark on your name as “someone that pays” and you can expect more anonymous postings that will trash your reputation. Your online reputation will be held hostage forever.
Most of these ‘physician evaluation / ranking’ websites are poorly constructed and have virtually no monitoring. Most of them are seldom updated and have physicians in the wrong categories. For example, they list neurosurgeons under neurologist. They often include physicians that have left the area or retired many years ago. It also seems that only angry patients bother to write evaluations. In talking to my patients, I have found virtually none that even bother to check these sites.
We have this horrible review from a nut case patient. It claims my secretary is on drugs. I was very upset, called my lawyer. He told me not to worry. Rarely do people look at those sites to pick a dentist. He asked me how my new patient numbers are. I told him great. He asked me has my busniess suffered. I told him no. Then it hit me like a hammer. This is all becoming a new way to withrdraw money from our pockets. Rating companies that allow bad ratings on the internet and will not remove them (unless you advertise on their sites) and companies that will take off bad ratings from the internet. And we have all fallen for it. Be honest with your patients, treat them well, do good work and let this whole internet stuff self implode all on its own. Once I realized this, I stopped worring about it, and now I sleep better and have let this go.
Definitely a scam. If someone is really sexually assaulted, they would go to Board and/or police. At least the Board ALWAYS investigates. However, I would like to see a lawsuit against site operators that publish slanderous remarks. They must be held to the same standards that other publishers are held for slander and liable.
The County Attorney where I live accused a local anesthesiologist of fondling female pain patients in return for analgesic prescriptions. One of this pain doctor’s patients had retired from her job at the Salt Lake City FBI office (due to chronic pain) and upon learning that the County was trying to wrongly ruin her doctor, she reported to her former FBI colleagues that we had a problem up here in the hinterland. The FBI investigated and learned that the County Attorney and his assistants had paid for perjured testimony from three women who were at the time en route to the state prison for habitual narcotics violations. All three women naturally agreed to say the doctor in question had fondled them in return for analgesic prescriptions written, and all three were rewarded by being enrolled in Drug Court instead of having to proceed to the prison, in spite of the fact that under honest circumstances none of the three would have been eligible for drug Court.
The doctor in question is still in practice, although he has been mercilessly bothered by the state licensing board even after the cases were closed. The corrupt County Attorney did step down (probably the FBI told him he could no longer hold elected public office), but the new County Attorney and all of the attorneys there were in on the crime and have not be sanctioned in any way. The public was never let in on the story.
Some physicians and dentists apparently do molest patients when they are unconscious–or at least, they have confessed to having done so. For this reason I think it is imperative to have a witness present whenever a patient is unconscious. The opportunistic County Attorneys are out there (if they can rig up a showy criminal trial, it increases the odds that they can run for State office and get elected). So are opportunistic criminals on the way to prison.
A major problem is that the state boards function like preloaded “witch hunts” — just ready to go after who ever’s name they get. A few years back, one of our local doctors was accused of some kind of inappropriate sexual event with a patient during his office hours. The doctor was finally “cleared” — but it put his practice on hold for 90 days (it put everything on hold). Then the board still decided that he could not be in the room with any female patients unless he had a chaperone.
In another case, a patient sent from our city– to a major epilepsy program at a university hospital, claimed that she had been sexually molested (I believe by a male tech) during her admission for epilepsy monitoring. These admissions have 24 hour video and EEG monitoring, and the attending neurologists went back through every second of her video record. There was no such event —- but evidently there is a fair amount of psychiatric pathology in some some neurology patients. This did harm the reputation of the program, and interfered with some referrals, even though the whole complaint was bogus.
very nice opening line… this was a very informative read, though there are no proofs, we can’t say that it isn’t real either since it is very possible, no one would know better, especially if you are sedated… but it would be much better if you have someone with you whenever you have procedures that will require you to be asleep…
As an oral surgeon, office anesthesia is an important part of my practice. It has always been office policy that I am NEVER alone with a sedated female patient or child, not even for one second, and I have made sure that my personnel understand that they could be called upon to testify to this policy under oath. Unfortunately, in this modern legal climate in which our lives can be ruined by anonymous accusers , I will have to amend the policy to include all patients, sedated or not.