I recently ordered two reports, @ a whopping $12.95 each to research doctors from Healthgrades.com. All the information contained in both reports was available on free sites on the web. They also have the site:physicianreports.com. Exact same interface.
I would rate and grade these sites 0, for $ not equaling value.
Is a report from Healthgrades.com worth it?
Wed, 08/16/2006 - 13:40
Is a report from Healthgrades.com worth it?
Wed, 08/16/2006 - 21:00
#1
(In reply to Loroc)
The AMA and state medical boards have seen to it that information on physicians is highly restricted. The real information on doctors is kept in the National Practitioners' Data Bank, but the public has no access to it.
The majority of the services, like Healthgrades, publish information on physicians that you can obtain for free from state medical boards. Just because a physician has no disciplinary action recorded on the state medical board website does not mean that there have been no complaints against him/her or that the physician is competent.
In 2004, I was diagnosed by a gastroenterologist in Michigan with premalignant adenomas, diverticulitis of my transverse colon, and a hereditary form of colon cancer. His treatment for these diagnoses was Zelnorm, a laxative, and annual cancer surveillance endoscopies. My PCP informed me that the GI guy had a history of "making up diagnoses and clinical findings" in order to continuously subject patients to medically unnecessary endoscopies. My PCP sent me to another specialist who determined by endoscopy that I never had any of the conditions diagnosed by the GI specialist. During the second endoscopy, my colon was perforated and I was sent home, assured that the abdominal distention and pain I was experiencing were due to "trapped air" from the endoscopy. Five hours later, I returned to the hospital in an ambulance with severe peritonitis. I underwent emergency surgery (a colon resection) and spent a week in the hospital on IV antiobiotics. All of this to confirm that I had been lied to.
I filed a complaint with the Michigan Medical Board, and the complaint went through endless reviews by state investigators and physicians who determined that the GI specialist "practiced below the minimal standards of medicine". The matter was forwarded to the Michigan Attorney General's Office where it was dropped. The FBI is now investigating the physician for fraud.
If I checked the state's website for disciplinary action taken against this physician, I would find nothing and assume that he was A-okay. Nothing could be further from the truth. The public needs access to the National Practitioner's Data Bank to protect themselves from incompetent, criminal physicians.
Thu, 08/17/2006 - 17:50
#2
This is a very interesting topic. One of the reasons Joanne and I started RateMDs.com is because we always suspected that state medical boards "protect their own" because they "police their own". Most (all?) state medical boards are made up of doctors, who are loathe to come down too hard on a fellow doctor, IMO. I think it's sometimes a case of "there but for the grace of god, go I." It is inexcusable that if a doctor has hundreds of complaints against him, the public never knows it unless the board happens to rule against him, which seldom occurs.
My hope is that RateMDs will one day become more comprehensive than the state medical boards. A similar situation occurred with college professors due to RateMyProfessors.com, another site I founded. After about 6 years, most professors in the U.S. and Canada had multiple ratings; I think RateMDs is on a similar path, which means we've got about another 4 years to go before the RateMDs database is comprehensive.
Another serious problem is that doctors are only policed on the state level, and almost every state seems to try to outdo the others in incompetence when it comes to providing information to the public. I am convinced that most of these state medical boards have heard of "computers", but have never actually seen one.
John
Sun, 08/20/2006 - 14:50
#3
(In reply to madmax)
I have found that this site has been especially helpful - peer ratings are much more trustworthy than the bloated state agencies and the pay per view offerings on the web.
Marcelle
Sun, 08/20/2006 - 19:25
#4
(In reply to Loroc)
I have a question. What is to stop a physician from reviewing him/herself on this board and skewing the stats on quality, helpfulness, and knowledge?
Tue, 08/22/2006 - 21:04
#5
>I have a question. What
>is to stop a physician from reviewing him/herself
>on this board and skewing the stats on quality,
>helpfulness, and knowledge?
(In reply to lyndalu)
Good question; there isn't much we can do about a doctor rating himself. However, we do have severaal methods we use to eliminate/reduce the number of ratings coming from the same source, so hopefully we are keeping the self-rating to a minimum.
John
