Home Forums Discussions General Discussion Physician Review Sites

I received my Medical Economics eConsult today. There was this article about physician reviews.

So, I took a look and found one that had 13 reviews. Ten were 4 stars and glowing. Three were 1 star and not. (I am not saying this to brag on the ten -- it just allows for the point of the post).

I could pretty much tell that the three were no longer in the practice. They sounded rather demeaning. A lot of it is that it is taken out of context. I would much rather a patient come in the next visit or even that visit and relate to me how they felt about the last visit.

I was tempted to actually post my own in response. I didn't and another article about "damage control" says you shouldn't.

Just wondering what people would do. It's simply frustrating beyond belief to read these. The comments that hurt the most are the criticisms of what you think is one of your biggest strengths.

Suffice it to say, I am not going to look again. Ignorance is bliss. Unless, of course, it is another doctor. Could learn something.

Yea, I mean someone wrote a one line review for my dad. 1 Star. At the end of the day, people will give more value to word of mouth than an online review. Lots of people like to become keyboard warriors when they are protected by the anonymity of the Internet. I wouldn't worry too much about it. Just keep up the good work and the patients will keep coming. If they knew you like we did, all the reviews would be off the chart

Negative reviews can affect you, but people who trust those anonymous reviews are probably they type that tend to make them anyway. My solution has been to begin giving patient satisfaction surveys in the office and to post any (both positive and negative) specific comments on our website. On these, I may make a comment about a negative review, but the only negative comments have been on wait times and I just list how long that patient actually waited. If I felt it was excessive, I say so.

Thanks Sandeep.

I dunno. I track referral sources and more and more are coming from the internet (my website, LinkedIn, Yelp, etc.).


;-) Indeed.

I checked my profile on the two sites in the Med Economics article. On vitals.com I got good reviews, had a couple of "recognition" awards I never heard of, and found out I was the team physician for the Tallahassee Tiger Sharks (200 miles from my office) and was on the surgical review committee on a Tallahassee hospital (I am an internist). On RateMds.com there were no errors, but no ratings either, and the site offered a link to my "online appointment site", which was interesting since I don't have one.

So I don't know that there is much useful on these sites, at least not for me.

It is interesting, because I think the owners of these sites (I hate to say it) are out to make money. While I certainly can improve (and did get those same rewards, lol), it is quite obvious that those who write negative reviews are doing so to some degree out of spite.

If you notice in the positive review, nearly EVERYTHING is a generality. Examples for anyone, not me: Always there for me, works hard, etc. Usually no specifics such as I came to him once on a Saturday, and he....

I do wish I would hear from those who are unhappy in the rooms, but that is just not how it goes. I did learn one really good thing. One person wrote that I tend to read my MA's HPI and not ask other questions after. Maybe that's true. I don't think so. BUT, that is food for thought and can be helpful.

I do think the radio buttons for 1 through 4 can be helpful.

I think a better model (or at least an adjunct to review sites) might be your score on those Medscape quizzes. You'd pick the ones that are in your specialty and it would publish your score online, for anyone to see. I just nailed a gastrocnemius pyomyositis case.

The folk who run those sites are just out to make money, and they think its really a big joke on all of "you arrogant doctors." I've seen a couple of articles quoting the guy who runs RateMds. Unbelievable.

As stated above, I agree about the money. If there should be sites like these, then why not have well done, regulated sites like a FB or Twitter. I don't mean use them, but it's crazy to have all these sites, and they are all formatted differently, have wrong info as John said, and practically encourage negative reviews.

One frustration about medicine is that the cards are stacked against us for everything. If someone wants to sue, they can take the record to as many attorneys as they wish. If they lose, oh well, it was contingency any way. If they make a board complaint and lose, oh well, it's anonymous. If a staff member is fired and brings a harrassment charge against you, they are protected by the whistle blower act. You can't turn around and sue them.

The board lists every thing on their site. Why isn't their a page on it for those who have sued or those who have brought complaints. Maybe the complaint was legit, and they should have prevailed, but it would be nice to go online before you accept a patient and find out they have filed two board complaints.

The frustration I have with these online sites is the anonymity and that things are taken out of context. I think they should have to at least register with their first name and last initial to at least let you remember the even if there were one. But, as the physician in the article at the top stated, I don't even want to know. I will let the patients go on those sites, I will remain ignorant.

One parent asked me to send the prescription on a Saturday to a certain pharmacy. One bad thing about ePrescribe is you don't know they are closed. So, she was livid that I didn't call her to tell her it was closed. This was a major pharmacy. So, she went to another one in the chain, and they have access to the answering machine. "Nope, he didn't leave a script ma'am." They never told he that it may be ePrescribed given I have sent hundreds to them. Then she called back, but the service was down. By the time I got the page, it was all over. The perfect storm. Told me the next day; well yelled at me the next day that her child was very, very sick. Yet, she didn't take the child to the ED. So, she never bothered to listen to my side of the story. All it would have taken was to go to the pharmacy and see if the script were there and when it was sent in.

So, she left the practice. Could have ended there. But, no she had to put it on her Facebook. She asked for suggestions for other pediatricians. Could have ended there. But, she had to add "I need a new one, because mine is incompetent" and she used my practice name.

I don't think the patients know the amount of time and work and money we have put into becoming a physician. Yell at me, change doctors, whatever; but don't try to hurt my practice.

Bert,
There is such a thing as slander. If a patient/person says something untrue and damaging to our reputation or practice, that is not protected by the constitution. We need to take action against these websites. I am surprised we allow these things to happen! Oh well, guess I am on some major rants lately, and I am just back from vacation!!!

No, I agree. And, while the fight against reimbursement and such is worth it, I am not sure going after these people for slander would be worth it or winnable. However, if it is out and out defamation, you can ask the owner of the site to remove it. Be kind of hard to sue them any way given they don't reveal their identities. I do believe they are a joke (the sites), but, unfortunately some people believe them.

I suppose when ten people write absolutely glowing remarks vs. three obvious chip on their shoulder negative people, it helps.

Every time I have a situation like the FB incident, I call my attorney, and he says the same thing. Fighting it will just make it worse. It's sad. To the tune of $50.00.

Bert, I'm going to disagree with you on one thing. They do so know how much time and effort it takes to become a physician. The issue is, THEY DON'T CARE. They are jealous,arrogant, and they have an opportunity to stick it to you with absolutely no consequences to themselves. So they do so. Ok, well some of them don't know, but most have a good idea (unless its the medicaid crowd, which we don't deal with).

You can tell the sites think it is a joke because of what they allow up there and refuse to remove even if you call. The people can just say anything without any justification (like saying you are incompetent.) They should require these reviews have no "judgements." If they want to place a negative review, they should have to 1) identify themselves, 2) explain what happened and just state that this is why they are unhappy with this particular physician/practice, and 3)give up all medical privacy rights regarding the incident. Then allow the physician, if they wish, to comment on the incident.

The worst of these reviewing sites is ZocDoc. Not the review policy that they have printed on their website. I mean the "effective" review policy ... what actually happens.

I agree - and we had a recent victory against a libelous posting. Last month we fired an employee. During the 2 months she had worked for us, she had stolen hours (we have cameras with timestamps and she was warned), exhibited chronic absenteeism and tardiness, and was caught faking sick (for an entire week!) via her facebook posts (a staff member alerted us to it). The day we fired her (the Monday after the latest incident), she posted an anonymous review of our practice on several sites. We knew it was her - the content was malicious, defamatory, and false. We drafted a letter and had our attorney sign it and send it to her. She removed the reviews the same day she received the certified, return receipt letter from our attorney. A small victory, but a victory nonetheless.

It is a shame though that we had to expend so much time, energy, and money for something like this. The most sobering part is that she could have dragged the process out to the courts where we would have had to subpoena her ISP to prove it was actually her who wrote the review. We had luck on our side.

Like Bert, we too have had our share of negative reviews - all from discharged patients. I believe prospective patients can tell when somebody was in the wrong and they discount those reviews.

Wayne,

Thanks. Makes me feel a lot better. Again, I think these sites would be better if they just had the surveys. I ended up with mostly 4s, although you can't get 4s, if one person puts a 3. But, at least the 10 completely outweigh the 3.

It's the comments. Hell, another doctor who wants to get a leg up could go on and write atrocious things. Personally, I am just not going to go on there.

@AFTP

That was a nice job. I had a disgruntled employee who was upset that I let her go due to calling in narcotics. We proved it, but the DA nor the police cared. And, wouldn't you know the pharmacy didn't even get a name of the MA for 120 tablets of 5 mg of Vicodin for a six-year-old even though the MA was on the same drug. She filed a harassment suit against me, which I finally won, but it took two years and thousands of dollars to my attorney.

The state of our legal system is just as disheartening as our national government. Not surprising, since it is essentially staffed by the same type of individual.

I think it is time for a revolution. Fortunately, you can't read my signature.

BTW, with my attorney. He kept saying, "I think you should write the letter. It looks better if it comes from you." Then he would charge me $185.00 to proofread it.

Bert,

I looked one day at my reviews and had a similar result. I initially wanted to respond to the negatives and of course agreed with the positives, but I lost curiosity extremely quickly with the whole concept of the internet physician review process.
For me personally, I am not building a practice, and the patient that is dissuaded by a negative review and leaves my practice is just fine with me. So I distilled the whole review process to not unlike a high school popularity contest. It reeks of puerile intent, and as you, have not even looked again nor do I have any desire to look again.

Yelp is another bad one. I've been told that if someone reviews you on this service, they will call and try to sell you there services to improve your ratings. One office I know of refused, but then asked their patients to write reviews in Yelp. Well, they said that the company then "filtered" all of the good reviews out to another page, so when someone searched on them there was a low rating and it was based on mostly the bad reviews. I checked, and sure enough there are many good reviews filtered out. One positive reviewer even said her initial review was somehow deleted, so she was writing another one (which was of course filtered out.)

I went to another doctor that I know of and most of her negative reviews were filtered out. Maybe she is paying them. I don't know.

But people do read these and make decisions on them. I have had potential new patients email me and say they were canceling their appointment because of negative online reviews.

I won't argue against any of the points or approaches outlined above. Ignoring these sites is a perfectly reasonable approach. As is taking formal legal action, when necessary.

As part of a more general attempt to feel empowered in situations like these, we are taking a more proactive stance. We all have plenty of patients who are happy with the care we provide; many of them actually verbalize their appreciation. We will identify those patients (perhaps after they say something nice) and hand them a piece of paper with their follow-up appointment and other paperwork. The paper will say something like "Thanks for the kind words. If you would care to share them with others, please go to the following doctor review websites and post your feelings about our practice and the care you have received here".

Maybe if the ratio of positive votes to complainers on these sites approaches say, twenty-to-one, even those who use the reviews will put the complaints in the appropriate perspective.

I prefer the petite brownie bites, blueberry scones, headcheese, deer jerky, homemade kahlua/beer, polish chocolate, home made cinnamon roles, lemon meringue pie, etc. and somehow the term "ignorance is bliss" take on a whole new meaning.

Yeah, Jon, as I mentioned someone I know did just that with Y**P, but since they didn't pay a fee for them to help "improve their online image" most of the ratings that their happy patients sent in were hidden in the "Filtered Screen". to access it, you have to see this thing that doesn't even look like a link. Its light grey on a white background. No underlining. Heck, its hard to even see! But if you click on it then you see the postive ratings, which are NOT used to determine the overall ratings.

What's the matter, Jimmie...giving up on emu? (Meant to tell you: I had some GREAT emu steaks last week. Thanks for putting us on to it!).

Wayne, around here Yelp is considered a good source for restaurant reviews. I didn't even know they were rating the docs! Vitals.com and healthgrades seem to give the positive reviews as much play as the negatives; not that I am promoting them, in any way.

It's nice to know that Mr. Swapceinski will hand over documents if he is subpoenaed. Last time I checked, with a properly served subpoena, you don't have a lot of choice.

Jon,

My patients are trying to kill me with kindness with all the artery clogging food, and since emu steak will not have that intended effect I have been left wanting. But glad you had the steak I promised but never delivered! lol

I found this to be useful

http://patients.about.com/od/doctorinformationwebsites/a/mdratingsreview.htm

I will just add one more comment that came to mind.

Book 1 Harry Potter and the Sorcerers Stone, Chapter 12--

"However, this mirror will give us neither knowledge or truth. Men have wasted away before it, entranced by what they have seen, or have been driven mad, not knowing if what it shows is real or even possible."

This is how I felt the day I looked at my own reviews on line.