"Medical Experts Riled As Doctors Try to Censor Their Patients" Consumer-oriented Web sites
like RateMDs and Vitals.com give Web users a chance to recommend and
review physicians and hospitals nationwide. But some doctors now are
telling their patients to censor themselves — or find another physician. "This
is just the guild trying to protect itself from accountability to those
it serves. That's not professional behavior — this is self-interested
behavior," said Laurence McCullough, professor of medical ethics at
Baylor College of Medicine. "And as a rule, when a doctor acts primarily out of self-interest, it's ethically suspect." Among the groups spearheading the move is a company called Medical
Justice, which says it is helping protect doctors from online libel,
which it says is an "emerging threat" within the medical profession. Dr.
Jeffrey Segal, a former neurosurgeon who founded Medical Justice to
help doctors fight off lawsuits, said he robustly supports the sites in
theory, but in practice they aren't properly monitored and can do
irreparable harm to a doctor's reputation — especially when people
pretending to be former patients write phony reviews. "It
was not only patients posting information, but people posing as
patients," Segal said, including "disgruntled employees, ex-spouses and
competitors."" I see both sides of this, but I wonder if censoring would help - the fakes would still be able to give you bad reviews and you have censored the possibility of any good ones, right?
http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,497066,00.html
From the article:
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Good article, thanks!
Interesting article. Glad you posted it.
I've never used any of the websites that review hospitals or physicans because of the above reasons. They aren't monitored and people will sabatoge the site with false statements. I wouldn't recommend one of the sites nor would I personally use the site. I'm glad to see this article and hope that everyone reads it. Lindy