by Insurance GuruDo they have this class in Med School? Is there a 101 and a 110? Maybe a refresher required every year... 201, 301, 401? Maybe a 510 by instructor approval only? Dethmama's last post made me want to pull my eyebrows out one hair at a time and then I opened my newspaper.... let me just say the eyebrows are gone.
Headline - "As rating sites grow, doctors voice concerns". I use all sorts of ratings sites; the latest "camping castle" is the result of a long search using comments made by other owners. I've never booked a Dethmama and Guru vacation without consulting Travelocity, Orbitz or any other place I could get first hand information. I read comments on anything from the latest skin product I may try to the plumber I allow into my home. I know how to exercise my "skepticism muscle" while doing research. So why is this an issue for doctors? Well - hang on to your eyebrows.
The doctors are worried about the reliability of the reviews and the tendency of comments to focus on "customer service rather than competency." Are they mutually exclusive? Would a doctors head explode if they managed both at the same time? As a patient why shouldn't I expect both? My customers do.
There is also doctor outrage that unhappy customers are more likely to post (duh) and that many of these sites are unmoderated. Reading between the lines, I believe doctors think we are illiterate cavemen that wouldn't know superior care if it saved all the starving children in Darfur. Yet, the bulk of the sites allow doctors to post rebuttals to any comment they feel is inaccurate. Do they? No - what a pedestrian bother that would be. If I'm looking for a dentist, it may be important to me to that they don't have private exam rooms or that an OB/GYN was two hours late for an appointment or that a group of family physicians made someone feel welcome.
Enter Medical Justice, a North Carolina firm that offers a "Mutual Privacy" confidentiality agreement. Look for these, coming soon, in that pile of paper on the clipboard in the doctor's office. They essentially state that you, as a patient, will not post on rating sites that fail to meet Medical Justice' s standards. I didn't find any links to an "approved rating site" on their web page. Gotta be a typo.
This is just another example of the isolating sense of entitlement and arrogance in the medical profession. If I'm sloppy and snippy at work, someone tells my boss and my boss tells me. I don't ask them to leave their free speech rights at the door before I do my job.
Some sites to review:
Angieslist.com
RateMDs.com
Vitals.com
DrScore.com
PS. I have the Guru Crystal Ball out and predict that this will eventually become an AMA issue.
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2 comments:
Yeah, any doctor who handed me a paper telling me I couldn't tell someone if he mistreated me I would tell to fold it in four corners and place it where the sun don't shine as I ran for the door.
In my opinion a doctor handing you that can be doing it for only ONE reason... they know they suck when it comes to patient care and respect and they are trying to do pre-emptive damage control.
Hey Buck,
It amazes me just how out of touch doctors are. Don't any of them realize that they are essentially a business?
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