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Happy Thanksgiving!

We hope everyone has a relaxing and festive holiday season!

Happy Thanksgiving!

We hope everyone has a relaxing and festive holiday season!

This week, we had a question come in about how we handle reviews that providers disagree with. This issue has come up before, so I thought I'd take the opportunity to explain our current policy.

This week, we had a question come in about how we handle reviews that providers disagree with. This issue has come up before, so I thought I'd take the opportunity to explain our current policy.

Philosophically, how we handle these disputes is a question of transparency and helpfulness. If we knew that a review is undoubtedly true, we would want that review to be publicly available in the interest of transparency. If we knew that a review is undoubtedly false, we want to suppress that information because it would not be helpful to users. Now that we have addressed the two extremes, what about the vast majority of the cases that lie somewhere in between?

First, it's important to understand that there are two types of review information. There are reviews that are found around the web, and there are reviews that are written on DocSpot.com. For the reviews found around the web, our position has been to refer people to the sites that host those reviews. If the original site drops that review, we will as well.

When a provider disputes a review that was originally written on our site, the resolution is slightly more involved. First, we ask the provider to authenticate himself or herself, either by claiming the profile or by some equivalent method. We then attempt to contact the person who left the review to ask for clarification. If things can be resolved, great. If the reviewer does not respond, we feel comfortable taking down the information. If the reviewer does respond and things cannot be resolved, we would like to be able to present both sides of the story by leaving the original review intact and inviting the provider to leave his or her response. We don't presume to be the arbiter of truth and think that consumers would likely find both sides helpful in deciding whether to give any credence to the review. Obviously, it would be great if we knew what happened for sure; however, like other areas of life, things aren't always that clear.

If you have thoughts on how we should modify our current policy to better support transparency and helpfulness, please let us know.

This past week, we rolled out a fix so that if you are looking for a primary care doctor, you should only see doctors who we think are primary care providers. We actually had fixed this a long time before, but when we introduced the new search form a few months ago, we opened up the possibility for this issue to manifest itself again. This error occurs on multiple doctor directory websites, but on our site, you might have triggered the issue if you typed out "internal medicine" (and didn't choose the "Internal Medicine (primary care)" option). Under that scenario, you likely would have also seen specialists such as oncologists, hematologists, and endocrinologists included in the list of results.

This past week, we rolled out a fix so that if you are looking for a primary care doctor, you should only see doctors who we think are primary care providers. We actually had fixed this a long time before, but when we introduced the new search form a few months ago, we opened up the possibility for this issue to manifest itself again. This error occurs on multiple doctor directory websites, but on our site, you might have triggered the issue if you typed out "internal medicine" (and didn't choose the "Internal Medicine (primary care)" option). Under that scenario, you likely would have also seen specialists such as oncologists, hematologists, and endocrinologists included in the list of results.

One of the underlying issues is that specialists often train in internal medicine before specializing, and computers don't necessarily know to distinguish between what someone has trained in versus what someone currently practices. Obviously specialists are important, but they are not so relevant when users are searching for primary care doctors. So, we fixed that issue on our site. Typing in "Internal Medicine" or "Pediatrics" should now only list doctors who provide primary care.

On occasion, we'll receive an e-mail asking us to remove a profile completely. Sometimes, the request is triggered by fears of unfavorable reviews that patients might leave. We understand that concern, especially since some of what is posted on the internet is not actually true. In the interest of transparency, it is not our policy to hide what is already a matter of public record. While some of the reviews that are posted are not true, we think that most of the information is likely true and that on balance, the good outweighs the bad.

On occasion, we'll receive an e-mail asking us to remove a profile completely. Sometimes, the request is triggered by fears of unfavorable reviews that patients might leave. We understand that concern, especially since some of what is posted on the internet is not actually true. In the interest of transparency, it is not our policy to hide what is already a matter of public record. While some of the reviews that are posted are not true, we think that most of the information is likely true and that on balance, the good outweighs the bad. For that reason, we plan on continuing to allow users to leave reviews. We suggest, however, that social media can cut both ways and that providers need not simply resign themselves to inaction.

Instead of visiting the myriad of sites out there and trying to get each one to hide publicly available information, it may be more effective to encourage your patients to leave reviews about their interactions with you. If enough of your satisfied patients leave reviews, the other prospective patients will get a better sense of your style and can choose accordingly. Rather than shunning the effects of social media, we encourage providers who are concerned about their online reputation to engage with the platforms, whether it be updating profiles to highlight what's special about them or whether it be encouraging their customers to leave reviews.

I've been analyzing reviews left on different sites and found something surprising. While I knew that some reviews are not actually left by patients who had seen the health care provider, I was surprised to see how widespread the problem can be. For example, if you perform an internet search for "I was worried that they were going to wear an obnoxious cologne", you might see many thousands of reviews on a site that include that specific phrasing. That suggests that someone developed software to automatically post reviews on a site.

I've been analyzing reviews left on different sites and found something surprising. While I knew that some reviews are not actually left by patients who had seen the health care provider, I was surprised to see how widespread the problem can be. For example, if you perform an internet search for "I was worried that they were going to wear an obnoxious cologne", you might see many thousands of reviews on a site that include that specific phrasing. That suggests that someone developed software to automatically post reviews on a site. Unfortunately, without seeing a number of reviews across different providers, it can be hard to detect problems like this. (There are other phrases elsewhere that indicate similar issues.)

Assessing the value of patient reviews is tricky... on one hand, they can offer valuable feedback from actual patients; on the other hand, it's hard to know whether any specific review represents an authentic encounter. Hence, when selecting a provider, you might want to consider other aspects of a provider's care (in addition to the patient reviews that have been left about that provider).