Thursday 29 May 2008

Rate your doctor

I have recently been ranting about the dangers of a one way doctor patient relationship, and since then I have been alerted to the rather interesting website RateMDs.com which allows patients to rate their doctors online.

It could almost seem like a good idea if one had left one's brain in the car park, however there are many reasons why this kind of website are a complete waste of time. For one it is completely insecure, meaning that anyone can submit a doctor and anyone can rate the doctor. There is absolutely no check at all of anyone's identity, it really does beggar belief.

In fact there a few famous UK doctors have already been rated, Sir Darzi, Sir Liam Donaldson and Dame Carol Black amongst the elite few. If you fancy rating them or anyone else, then go for it, the site is completely insecure!

I am sure this kind of hair brained scheme will be coming to the NHS very soon, despite the fact that using 'patient satisfaction' as a surrogate marker of care quality is about as reliable as a Roulette wheel, our political masters just want sticks to beat and bully us with.

The people running these schemes are invariably the politically climbing of the medical profession, people who have sold their souls in order to chase money and honours. Organisations like the GMC are now run by selfish politicos who are keen to sell out their colleagues in producing yet more layers of needless and useless regulatory bureaucracy. It is also strange that nurses and other HCPs are not subject to the same mechanisms of command and control.

Dr Crippen has also recently written on how Primary Care is being wrecked by these traitors. Ironically as the quangos and these new gimmicky schemes proliferate, the patients will be the ones to suffer as good local services will be destroyed and doctors will find their job of caring for patients increasingly obstructed by the hair brained new ideas.

5 comments:

Anonymous said...

Garth,

On delving deeper into RateMD - it looks as if it's some kind of 'hidden entrance' to a shop selling T-shirts etc. Also you can set up you're own shop there if you like!

Wonder if this is the real motive for the site.

Suspect we'll see many more of these weird places appearing on the WWW for a while till people get fed up with them.

As you say, its just the kind of thing the NHS might latch on to. The really scary thing is that no one would bat an eyelid if they did.

Jobbing Doctor said...

I think regular bloggers will completely agree with you, Ferret.

If I refuse lifestyle drugs to my patients they will rate me as crap?

The whole idea is so gormless that Darzi, Nicholson, Donaldson and the other honours-grabbing bastards will introduce it.

Only 4 years till retirement, now.

Anonymous said...

Hello Garth, please take the link to the picture that you are using for this post down. The picture is copyrighted. Also, this is not an actual RateMDs.com logo. Thanks!

Dragonfly said...

There was an episode of Scrubs last year devoted to something like this. And it didn't even work there.

Anonymous said...

Patients have every right to rate a doctor with whom they've had an experience so terrible that others should know. It took me 8 years to find a competent doctor's where I live. Before that, you'd be appalled by some of my experiences, and it's my First Amendment Right to say so.