Wall Street Journal Examines Legal Fights Over Online Physician Reviews

Main Category: IT / Internet / E-mail
Article Date: 16 Sep 2005 - 0:00 PDT

email to a friend   printer friendly   opinions  

The Wall Street Journal on Wednesday examined the "growing number of legal battles being waged over Internet postings about medical complaints." According to the Journal, many patients have begun to post reviews of physicians on the Internet, a practice that "has some medical providers on edge." Several Web sites encourage patients to post anonymous reviews of physicians and dentists. For example, the Web site nddb.net asks patients to review thousands of physicians, and the site has collected about 600 responses to date. DR.Oogle administers a free Web site that includes anonymous reviews of about 19,000 dentists, and ratemds.com, also a free site, features about 11,000 reviews of physicians and allows physicians and others to post rebuttals. In addition, some patients have launched Web sites that criticize specific physicians. In response, some physicians have filed lawsuits against patients and Web site operators. "The potential problems are huge. My reputation is my stock in trade, ... and we work years and years to build that reputation. To have that shattered potentially (by an Internet posting) is a concern," Matt Messina, a dentist in Ohio and a spokesperson for the American Dental Association, said. Patient advocates, however, maintain that patients have a First Amendment right to describe their experiences with physicians. Lawrence Hipshman, an Oregon psychiatrist and professor at Oregon Health and Science University who received a single, negative review on nddb.net, said, "There shouldn't be any attempt to create a profile until there are maybe 100 reviews on a person" (Kesmodel, Wall Street Journal, 9/14).

"Reprinted with permission from http://www.kaisernetwork.org. You can view the entire Kaiser Daily Health Policy Report, search the archives, or sign up for email delivery at http://www.kaisernetwork.org/dailyreports/healthpolicy. The Kaiser Daily Health Policy Report is published for kaisernetwork.org, a free service of The Henry J. Kaiser Family Foundation . © 2005 Advisory Board Company and Kaiser Family Foundation. All rights reserved.

• Additional
• References
• Citations