We continue to espouse the dangers of sites where patients can “rate” doctors. Medical care is simply far too complicated for such a simplistic approach.
Today’s New York Times article “Noted Rater of Restaurants Brings Its Touch to Medicine” by Milt Freudenheim, discusses the Zagat-Wellpoint venture into a doctor ratings guide.
The article cites Medical Justice founder and CEO, Dr. Jeff Segal who states, “online comments are ‘at best anecdotal and in many cases fraudulent. In many cases they are posted by a disgruntled employee, an ex-spouse or even a competitor.'”
The article contains additional interesting quotes;
“Dr. Angelo S. Carrabba, an obstetrician in Rocky Hill, Conn., complained that Anthem Blue Cross and Blue Shield, a WellPoint company, was ‘treating medical care provided by dedicated and caring physicians as if we were preparing a meal’.”
Dr. Cheryl Ackerman, “It (anonymous doctor ratings) hurts somebody, their reputation, their livelihood.”
Arthur Caplan, director of the Center for Bioethics at the University of Pennsylvania, “There is no correlation between a doctor being an inept danger to the patient and his popularity,” Professor Caplan said. Reviewing doctors is “a recipe for disaster.”
We couldn’t agree more.
As Dr. Segal points out, we’re talking about the Internet, where anyone can write anything at all, with no real accountability. A disgrunted employee, an irrational individual, an ex… any and all of these can and do damage professional reputations and undermine confidence in a physician — with no merit to the allegation whatsoever! While the Internet remains a place where people are unaccountable and anonymous (regardless of the name they present,) it’s ignorant to take comments (pro or con) seriously.
We may have to contend with the First Amendment argument (though I don’t really see this as the government telling people what they can or cannot express.) Therefore the real solution is in educating people about these realities, so that they come to be a bit more analytical, not trust everything they read.
People are slowly becoming more net-savvy, more clear about this sort of thing. Meanwhile, there’s nothing at all wrong with a doctor saying “I’ll be happy to do the best I can to treat you, help you get well, but first you’ve got to agree to not be bad-mouthing me later.
Though some have called it a”gag,” such an agreement isn’t stopping anyone from recourse if there really was a legitimate case of malpractice. It simply keeps patients from talking trash.