Rate your doctor websites

[Kernal83]

Here is an interesting article published in the LA Times about websites where patients can rate their doctors. I personally think it isn't too great of an idea because I think that the potential for harm is greater than good. I also understand that if you are a "good doctor" you supposedly should have nothing to worry about. Your thoughts?

http://www.latimes.com/features/heal...,6851576.story

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[riverwoman1040]

I'll repost:

Transparency is a good thing. Random ranting patients and tiny sample sizes are not a good thing. Check out the Wisconsin Hospital Association's Checkpoint and Pricepoint to see how ratings can be done empirically and fairly. The random online stuff is useless, meaningless and harmful.

 

[lildave2586]

Hillary Clinton's healthcare plan contains a ton of stuff about generating doctor ratings and making them available to patients. The philosophy being transparency is good, but have fun trying to make it work.

I don't know how I feel about it. Take an anaestesiologist for example. They could do 1000 cases and have good outcomes. Then they have a bad day and one case goes bad and all of a sudden they can be labeled a doctor to stay away from.

 

[LeLu]

Here is an interesting article published in the LA Times about websites where patients can rate their doctors. I personally think it isn't too great of an idea because I think that the potential for harm is greater than good. I also understand that if you are a "good doctor" you supposedly should have nothing to worry about. Your thoughts?

http://www.latimes.com/features/heal...,6851576.story

Link Broken

 

[riverwoman1040]

Hillary Clinton's healthcare plan contains a ton of stuff about generating doctor ratings and making them available to patients. The philosophy being transparency is good, but have fun trying to make it work.

I don't know how I feel about it. Take an anaestesiologist for example. They could do 1000 cases and have good outcomes. Then they have a bad day and one case goes bad and all of a sudden they can be labeled a doctor to stay away from.

That's why it only works if done by a third party. If you look at sites like Leapfrog, Checkpoint, etc. you can see that one unavoidable bad case won't hurt you. When you have studies with high enough n values that they're valid, it works. It's an entirely different situation than one angry, possibly uneducated patient complaining online. As for "have fun trying to make it work," it's actually part of my job right now, and it's working quite well. Quality is improving, and the providers have actually come to like it because it helps them see where they can improve.

 

[Kernal83]

Link Broken

http://www.latimes.com/features/health/la-he-docratings19-2008may19,0,6851576.story

Okay, lets hope that works

 

[AmoryBlaine]

That's why it only works if done by a third party. If you look at sites like Leapfrog, Checkpoint, etc. you can see that one unavoidable bad case won't hurt you. When you have studies with high enough n values that they're valid, it works. It's an entirely different situation than one angry, possibly uneducated patient complaining online. As for "have fun trying to make it work," it's actually part of my job right now, and it's working quite well. Quality is improving, and the providers have actually come to like it because it helps them see where they can improve.

Uh, where is this happening and how many providers are we talking about?

 

[Bushido416]

www.healthgrades.com is an example of this it pretty much has most doctors that have been in practice for 3 years or more. It's interesting but it should be taken with about as much salt as ratemyprofessor.com where you can go in find a professor you absolutely loved and find them rated poorly because they were difficult or someone flunked their class. If done fairly it's good but if it's just a facebook style blog then one uneducated unhappy patient can ruin it for that doctor. Also it adds another party to protect yourself against on top of defensive medicinal practices to cover from legal liability you also have to please patients who come in with their half baked diagnoses from their 30mins of web browsing or watching mystery diagnosis. If a doctor is rated well it won't necessarily infer quality as much as likeability and it becomes a popularity contest.

 

[njbmd]

Moving to Topics in Healthcare as this thread is more suited to that forum as opposed to medical school education.

 

[riverwoman1040]

Uh, where is this happening and how many providers are we talking about?

Wisconsin. The number is around 130 hospitals for each measure, but you can count them if you'd like.

http://www.wicheckpoint.org/index.aspx

http://www.wipricepoint.org/

http://www.wiservepoint.org/

I could provide trend graphs if you're still skeptical.

 

[tussin]

pretty much every physician will be sued at one point in their career, especially in specialties like OBGYN. If you haven't been sued yet, it's because you haven't been practicing long enough. With frivolous lawsuits by hungry attorneys so prevalent, it's bound to happen, and when that does, it's open season for a disgruntled patient to say what ever they want without fully understanding the implications

 

[docB]

That's why it only works if done by a third party. If you look at sites like Leapfrog, Checkpoint, etc. you can see that one unavoidable bad case won't hurt you. When you have studies with high enough n values that they're valid, it works. It's an entirely different situation than one angry, possibly uneducated patient complaining online. As for "have fun trying to make it work," it's actually part of my job right now, and it's working quite well. Quality is improving, and the providers have actually come to like it because it helps them see where they can improve.

This is all similar to the ill conceived CMS "Core Measures" and "PQRI" debacles that are being inflicted on us now. I suppose if you define "quality" as whatever yardsticks you've assigned value to in your surveys you could say that it's improving but what we've seen so far with the core measures is that the quality indicators were pretty bad and the data collection has been worse.

 

[cathyz]

Here is an interesting article published in the LA Times about websites where patients can rate their doctors. I personally think it isn't too great of an idea because I think that the potential for harm is greater than good. I also understand that if you are a "good doctor" you supposedly should have nothing to worry about. Your thoughts?

http://www.latimes.com/features/heal...,6851576.story

First of all, your posted link are not already accessible. Anyway, for me you have the point because isn't necessary to do something like that just to give idea to others just to know that this guy is a "good doctor". As we all know that this field is not a celebrity field which popularity is an edge to know of who is the "good doctor".