Do physician rating sites provide fair accounts?
The vast majority of these sites do not. Although, at the prompting of Medical Justice, this may be changing. Effective healthcare is a partnership between patient and doctor manifest by shared responsibility. This is different from a meal at a restaurant or watching a movie. There, the customer is ordinarily a passive “spectator.” In healthcare, the patient has an important role to play. If a patient posts that, after his operation, the wound opened, that looks bad. And, it’s easy to point the finger at the doctor. After all, he performed the surgery. But, if you now know that the patient went back to work as a construction-worker on the second post-op day against medical advice, the analysis changes. An honest accounting would give complete information. Half a story is just as likely to misinform as inform. (2) Isn’t transparency a good thing? Yes. We believe the day is coming when useful ratings, accessible by the Internet, will be the norm. Patients want good information. That make
