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.