Doctors Warned: Eliminating Online Reviews Poses Risks

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Doctors who attempt to limit patients' ability to post online reviews about their medical care might be risking legal liability as well as ethics complaints, a group of law professors warns on a new site.

The site, DoctoredReviews.com, launched on Wednesday by the Santa Clara University High Tech Law Institute and The Samuelson Law, Technology & Public Policy Clinic at the University of California Berkeley School of Law, aims to counter the efforts of the 3-year-old anti-review company called Medical Justice.

When Medical Justice emerged, the company stunned proponents of free speech by devising a new way to discourage negative comments online. Rather than threaten patients with libel actions -- which tend to be difficult to prove -- Medical Justice decided to use copyright law to nix unfavorable reviews.

The company, conceived by Dr. Jeffrey Segal, drew up a contract for doctors to ask patients to sign. This form, called "Mutual Agreement to Maintain Privacy," purports to assign the copyright interests in any future reviews patients write to the doctors. In exchange, the doctors promise to protect patients from "unwanted marketing information" -- anonymous targeting by marketers.

If patients sign the forms and later post unflattering reviews, the doctors can go directly to the publisher's site and demand their removal.

The strategy can work because the immunity laws that protect online publishers when users upload unlawful material don't apply to posts that infringe on copyright. Instead, the Digital Millennium Copyright Act's safe harbor provisions protect publishers from copyright infringement liability for users' posts, but only if the publishers take down material upon request.

Medical Justice's technique, however, drew criticism from digital liberties advocates. They question whether doctors should be presenting patients with these types of agreements. Now, some law professors are also warning that the strategy is legally questionable.

"We need doctors to understand that nothing comes for free. This particular form is not in their best interest," says Eric Goldman, director of the High Tech Law Institute. "Simply presenting the form to consumers might be an illegal practice," adds Goldman, who previously served as general to the review site Epinions.com. The new Doctored Reviews site refers to a case in New York, where former Attorney General Eliot Spitzer took action against Network Associates (now McAfee), for including language in its terms and conditions requiring consumers to obtain permission to publish reviews. Spitzer obtained an injunction requiring the company to remove that language from its terms.

Medical Justice has not yet responded to Online Media Daily's inquiries about the new site. But Segal reportedly has said that doctors could use these contracts to convince sites to take down "fictional or fraudulent" posts by competitors or others. It's not clear why that's the case, however, because in that scenario whoever posted the review wouldn't be the same one who assigned the copyright to the doctors.

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0 comments on " Doctors Warned: Eliminating Online Reviews Poses Risks".

1. Wayne Spivak from SBA * Consulting, LTD
   

   commented on: April 14, 2011 at 7:40 a.m.

   Doctors who are afraid of feedback are part and parcel of the medical mediocracy that is medical care in the US.

   It would be amazing how the behavior of the medical establishment would change should everyone have access to the ridiculous and annoying wait times and double booking (which got the airline industry into so much hot water).

   Wayne Spivak
   SBA * Consulting LTD
   <a href=http://www.sbaconsulting.com/>www.SBAConsulitng.com</a>
   Twitter: @WSpivak

2. Paula Lynn from Who Else Unlimited
   

   commented on: April 14, 2011 at 9:08 a.m.

   Because there are more privacy issues at stake here, posts may need to be more edited, such as other patient names or staff names not involved in the complaint. They also need to be more detailed. Patients have the right to vent and express their experiences not just for themselves, but to forewarn future patients. That said, there are patients who expect more than medical personel are ever able to deliver.

3. Mike Donatello from Opinions expressed are personal
   

   commented on: April 14, 2011 at 11:55 a.m.

   Many, many patients have unrealistic expectations of medical professionals (e.g., arriving 20 minutes late and expecting to be seen without rescheduling; ignoring the possibility of procedural risks and then rushing to sue when complications arise). If I were a physician, I would quickly drop any patient who chose to post a one-sided review.

4. Joseph Benza, jr. from www.YourCity.MD
   

   commented on: April 14, 2011 at 4:40 p.m.

   I agree with Wayne! We at www.YourCity.MD are the largest publishers of healthcare information and patient ratings on the web. Though media tends to ignore that fact!

   Proof beats conjecture every time:

   Robert Wood Johnson released a study in 2006 stating in summary that patient ratings (once there are between 35 to 45 ratings) coincide with quality outcome data on an almost one to one basis. Therefore why be afraid of feedback, if you are doing a good job? It's been proven that observed behavior results in better quality than unobserved behavior.

   On all 500 .MD city sites and all 50 .MD state websites (see www.MyCity.MD for list or search www.YourCity.MD by zip code) doctor’s feedback is posted numerically. However, the comments are delayed in a patent pending process in such a way as to help doctors mitigate patient issues, thwart lawsuits and improve the quality of patient care. There is no reason to slander a good doctor. They all need a chance to respond, fix the issue and move on.

   This process in it's infancy, made headline news when Dr Mark Deutsch was featured in modern physician Online in an article showing how he took negative comments and feedback, corrected the issues for the patients, who in turn re-rated him as a top doc! This process allowed him to reduce the mal-practice fees for all his surgeons!

   That is the true power of patient Feedback, when used properly.

   Here are just 2 quotes from Dr Deutsch's office as seen in the www.Cincinnati.MD site testimonials:

   "I was able to lower our malpractice fees by 3% per physician with YourCity.MD."

   - Jeanine Brailey, practice manager at Queen City Ear, Nose & Throat Associates in Cincinnati, Ohio
   

5. Joseph Benza, jr. from www.YourCity.MD
   

   commented on: April 14, 2011 at 8:13 p.m.

   This quote from Dr Deutsch regardind the feedback tools for doctors on YourCity.MD in particular http://www.www.Cincinnati.MD was left off my response below.

   "However, from my experience on a locally based rating system, http://www.Cincinnati.MD, some patient-rating and feedback systems can be inherently good for physicians and patients alike, especially smaller practices that can use feedback to improve and grow their practice. That said, patient-rating systems need to include a range of fundamental features so that physicians feel that it is fair and helpful to their practice."

   - Dr. Mark Deutsch, Cincinnati, Ohio

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