Sunday January 10, 2010
Googling Ourselves — What Physicians Can Learn from Online Rating Sites

"......My patients often Google a medication I've recommended or a disease I've diagnosed, despite the fact that I give them medication data sheets and patient education pamphlets. I figure it is not inconceivable that they would Google me too, and I'm curious to see what they will find.....

I anxiously scan the first 10 results, which offer a variety of promises to provide the reader with priceless information about Shaili Jain, M.D.: "free doctor profile report," "check her ratings and credentials," "detailed background report," "comparisons with physicians in similar specialties." Then my anxiety turns to fear as I find what I was looking for: patients' ratings of me on the many online physician-rating sites.

These sites, such as RateMDs, Vimo, and RevolutionHealth, offer patients an opportunity to rate physicians on their helpfulness, knowledge base, interpersonal skills, and punctuality..... Critics find the sites defamatory and fundamentally flawed. How can one be sure the person posting a review is really a patient and not someone with a grudge against the physician? If a physician disagrees with a particular comment, there is no opportunity for rebuttal: physicians are bound by privacy laws and a duty to preserve the confidentiality of patient information. Also, most rated physicians average a handful of ratings, which can hardly reflect the full range of impressions of a physician who sees hundreds of patients each year....

I find one score for me on Vitals.com — a pathetic 2.5 out of 5 — but I don't see any comments and can't figure out whether this is an aggregate score. It looks as if I have to pay for further information, so I scan the results for my colleagues. Most are not rated, some got 1 out of 5, and one got 4 out of 5. I exit the site, deciding its offerings are not meaningful. A few more minutes of surfing reveals that my Internet reputation is intact. I am relieved.
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As I log off and prepare for a day of doctoring, I realize that despite the anxiety it has provoked since medical school, I should adapt to having my scores available for public inspection — it will clearly continue to be a fact of my professional life. Whether publicly available performance evaluations will actually result in better care and service for patients or just more bureaucracy and wasted energy remains to be seen."

Read full article from Shaili Jain, M.D. at The New England Journal of Medicine (january 7, 2010) here