Some doctors are expressing outrage over consumer ratings services like Zagat’s and Angie’s List, after expanding into the sensitive realm of medical care, the Associated Press reported.
Many doctors are now fighting back by asking patients to agree to what amounts to a gag order, barring them from posting negative comments online.
Dr. Jeffrey Segal, a North Carolina neurosurgeon who has made a business of helping doctors monitor and prevent online criticism, said consumers and patients are hungry for good information about doctors, but Internet reviews seem to provide just the opposite.
Segal said some sites are little more than tabloid journalism without much interest in constructively improving practices and their sniping comments can unfairly ruin a doctor’s reputation.
He believes such postings say nothing about a doctor’s medical skills and privacy laws, but medical ethics leave doctors powerless to change it.
That’s why Segal started Medical Justice, a Greensboro, N.C.-based business that charges a fee for providing doctors with a standardized waiver agreement preventing patients from posting online comments about the doctor, including his “expertise and/or treatment.”
The company maintains that “published comments on Web pages, blogs and/or mass correspondence, however well intended, could severely damage physician’s practice.”
Medical Justice suggests physicians have all of their patients sign the agreements and should they refuse, the doctor might suggest finding another doctor.
Segal said he had not heard of any cases where longtime patients have been turned away for not signing the waivers.
The business works by notifying doctors of any negative rating that may appear on a Web site, and, if the author’s name is known, physicians can use the signed waivers to have the reviews removed.
Segal said nearly 2,000 doctors have signed up since the company began offering its service two years ago.
However, sites like RateMDs.com have refused to remove negative reviews that have been posted to their sites.
“In recent months, six doctors have asked us to remove negative online comments based on patients’ signed waivers and we’ve refused,” said John Swapceinski, co-founder of RateMDs.com.
He believes Segal’s site is basically forcing patients to choose between health care and their First Amendment rights, a matter he finds repulsive.
Swapceinski is even planning to post a “Wall of Shame” listing names of doctors who use patient waivers.
But Segal maintains that the waivers are aimed more at giving doctors ammunition against Web sites than against patients. However, Medical Justice uses suggested wording to warn users that breaching the agreement could result in legal action against patients.
Many are completely opposed to the waivers, like Lenore Janecek, who formed a Chicago-based patient-advocacy group after being wrongly diagnosed with cancer.
“Everyone has the right to speak up,” she told the Associated Press.
Janecek said that while she’s never posted comments about her doctors, she believes the sites are amongst the few resources patients have to evaluate a doctor’s care.
Dr. Nancy Nielsen, president of the American Medical Association, has stated in the past that online doctor ratings sites “have many shortcomings.” However, the association has no official position on patient wavers.
She suggests that online doctor reviews should be taken with a grain of salt, and should certainly not be a patient’s sole source of information when looking for a new physician.
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