Rate Your M.D.?

A doctor friend of mine suggested I have a look at RateMDs.com.  This site has good coverage in North America, and Newfoundland and Labrador has ratings for over 700 physicians and surgeons out of the 1100 or so who are licensed in this province.  Given the risk of medical injury and the potentially life and death consequences of making a bad pick of a physician or surgeon, any source of information that helps in making such an important choice is worth a look.

So I looked up my own family practitioner.  This doctor was reviewed by eight consumers of medical services.  His score, at 3.2, seemed relatively low, so I looked at the actual comments of the eight reviewers.  He was rated either very high or very low.  The low rating reviewers pulled the score down significantly.  One low rater appeared to be a disgruntled former employee.  This brings up a weakness of this kind of public rating resource: most rated M.D.s have a small number of patients who have actually rated them, so given the small sample, the ratings are prone to distortion by a few aggrieved patients.  As we all know, people who are happy with you don’t necessarily go out of their way to say so, whereas people with a grievance often broadcast it far and wide.  As the saying goes, you can’t please all of the people all of the time, and there will always be unreasonable patients who want to grind an axe.

That said, RateMDs.com is one more internet resource to add to the information that the consumer should consider when making an important decision about medical or surgical care.  It would work more reliably if more patients posted ratings and comments on the site, so I encourage everyone to “rate your M.D.”.  I did for my M.D.

Given the alarming frequency of suboptimal and substandard medical care, and of outright medical malpractice, doing some research may just help you to avoid becoming a malpractice victim.  But read this resource with a critical eye.