I was taken aback this morning when I saw in my inbox a message from Angie’s List announcing the addition of medical professions to their database of consumer service provider reviews, even going as far as to offer member incentives for writing reviews.
…Angie’s List members can now submit reports on health care providers, like dentists, primary care physicians, cosmetic surgeons, chiropractors, oncologists, pediatricians and dozens of other specialties. We’re also collecting reports on hospitals, pharmacies, insurance providers and more. See the full list.
and
Sick service or a clean bill of health?
We’ve received a lot of requests from members over the years about rating healthcare services. At first we thought, “we do homes, not health.”
But then we kept thinking about it, and we realized that Angie’s List has become a well-respected destination for consumers around the country to find highly rated service companies. Why shouldn’t we extend the offering to services even closer to home?
The short answer – we should. The long answer – it will take time for these categories to become as well-stocked as roofing, plumbing or HVAC. But you can help by adding reports about everyone from your allergist to your urologist. See a full list of categories or start reporting now.
I’ve been a big fan of Angie’s List ever since I bought our condo a little while back and needed numerous recommendations for HVAC repair, movers, hardwood flooring, carpet, locksmiths, and even travel agents. These recommendations proved to be invaluable, as I have yet to be dissatisfied with any of the work I’ve had done as a result. Angie’s List is a true asset in these areas.
Crossing into healthcare, however, Angie’s List enters a very gray area as far as the actual review process and the whole idea altogether. To date, if a consumer has a dispute with a general contractor over a hardwood flooring project, the consumer can write a negative review. The contractor can then write a response to the review and can ultimately “resolve” the issue, though the negative mark still remains on the report card to one extent or another. This check and balance mechanism probably greatly reduces incidences of the occasional irate consumer who tries to “get back” at a contractor over something that might not have actually been a big deal. Healthcare providers, on the other hand, are governed by federal law, specifically the HIPAA privacy law, which ultimately leaves us defenseless against negative publicity. If a patient complains on Angie’s List that he or she didn’t like the implant I placed, by law I cannot comment on the situation because I am bound by HIPPA. In fact, I cannot even acknowledge publicly that a person is even an actual patient of mine. I’m sure the stickiness of the situation is obvious.
While great for professions that are not bound by privacy laws, I feel Angie’s List has no business including healthcare providers in their database. Stick with everything else. There’s plenty of other areas to keep us all busy. I’m interested to see where this goes.
A perfect example here on the Angie’s List forum:
http://forum.angieslist.com/forums/thread/745/2072.aspx
I feel for you Zahnarzt- but that’s about as far as it goes.
Good service means good service from a plumber to a doctor. I am personally THRILLED to see that the Average Joe now has a good place (one that we already come to on a regular basis) to see how other people have been treated at a potential doctors office.
I love my doctors. And being a female who is allergic to everything under the sun and with 2 kids under 6 years I’ve got a lot of doctors to talk about!
But I have had some bad experiences at places that I was forced to go to due to substandard-insurance policies. If I’d have had somewhere to go check out the dentists on the list, I would never have randomly picked one and gone where I did and had my mouth savaged and ended up with a staff infection and then accused of being a pain-killer junkie just looking for meds by the pompous *** whose name was on the door. By the way, the filling he put in is crumbling to pieces.
Some doctor’s offices treat you like you are an inconvenience (as opposed to their meal ticket that we are). I tend to avoid such places if I can. And guess what? Now I can! I’m a personable being and I like feeling like I belong and feeling appreciated. I can take my business anywhere and so I expect folks to treat me with respect and kindness. That’s the kind of info I look for on Angie’s List.
I have a lot of doctor’s offices that I go to that are very welcoming and very good to work with. I will praise those practices and I will warn folks against those that have been the complete opposite.
I don’t think that the fact that you (and the other doctors out there) are bound by HIPPA should keep the rest of us from sharing the information.
I think that you/they should treat this as more incentive for a doctors office to do their best to make the experience a good one for their patients. Customer satisfaction being something that too many practices don’t worry about these days since they don’t really have anyone to answer to. Have you seen some of the “rules” posted at doctors offices these days? “Prescription refills require 48 hours notice.” Well, if I ran out of my blood pressure medicine without my realizing it how well will 2 days without it go? “48 hours Notice Required for cancelation otherwise a $50 charge will be incurred.” Ok, well 2 days ago my 2 year-old wasn’t puking all over and now you want to charge me $50 for messing up your day? What about the fact that I sat in your waiting room for 2 hours and then you look at me for 5 minutes and I’m hit with a $200 bill since you have decided you don’t want to work with my insurance provider? That’s either $11,000 per hour rates or I just got charged $100 per hour to sit in the chair in your waiting room. And how about the less-than-stellar office staff? How is a doctor supposed to know that they have a complete and total B working their front desk? I actually had a woman at a walk-in clinic tell me that I needed to “sit my *** down and wait the 2 hours for the doctor” when I asked her a simple policy question. It was something that she should have been able to answer in her sleep. Needless to say I walked out the door and did not give them my business. I feel that everyone has the right to know these things and they can then make a determination on where to go with some knowledge based on others experiences.
Well, doctors you now have to answer to the millions of Angie’s List subscribers and I’m going to do my part. Mark one down for the Average Joe!
I certainly understand the positives to allowing reviews of healthcare providers, don’t get me wrong, however you seemed to have missed my point. While good service certainly benefits from positive reviews, and bad service can learn something from negative reviews, this forum remains entirely one-sided when covering healthcare. The checks and balances provided by Angie’s List simply cannot function because of privacy laws and HIPAA. Period. No comment. Not to Angie’s List. Not to List readers. Not to anyone!
Having a lot of experience in this field, I can insure you our practice is where it is today because of the positive word-of-mouth advertising and referrals we receive every day. Our patients are our livelihood. You have that absolutely right. That’s on top of the fact that we do not deal with HMO or even PPO plans. No matter how hard we try or even how wonderful our service is for a given patient, though, our business involves working with third parties over which we have NO CONTROL. I can fire the B who gave you a hard time in a second and make sure she doesn’t work in a 15 mile radius ever again. But now consider you horrible insurance experience. I’ve seen firsthand a few patients leave our office glowing from the difference we provided over the PPO farm with which their employers contracted only to call back a week later completely irate when their insurance reneged on a procedure predetermination. We’re the office! Why didn’t we know this would happen? A contractor can comment and shed light on a negative issue so that List readers can put the story together and make a good decision. We cannot. Then the irate person gets a few friends involved and has them write negative reviews because hey, there’s no way the reviews can be challenged. Sure, they can check “yes” to the “was the work completed” box so the review has more weight. No one will know. And then that evil doctor will pay! Free speech is not a two-way street here.
And I do not doubt for a second that a hundred patients would write glowing reviews of our practice on the List. But you know, there will come a time when that one person with the insurance issue comes on and spends a few hours crafting the ultimate negative review, enlisting the help of friends, and instigating a smear campaign that we can do nothing to stop. This is the Internet, and that’s how people can get. That great sense of anonymity allows for this online whereas a wolf-crier in a town full of fans would be looked at with puzzlement, the situation resolved.
But why would a new person even visit the town when he or she could check it out online first? I’ve probably made a good dozen contractor contacts through the use of Angie’s List, and I did not and probably will not call on one with some positive and some very negative, unresolved reviews under their company name. Certainly not when dealing with healthcare! I’m sure a lot of people agree with me here.
On an entirely different note, think about large PPO practices, their national parent insurance companies, and their role in this debate. We’re talking multi-million dollar businesses here. Do you think they will sit idly by and allow damaging reviews to affect part of their referral source? Who provides this forum where free speech is a one-way deal? I like Angie’s List a LOT, and I don’t want to see it go.
Reviewing healthcare providers is a great idea–it would be a valuable tool for everyone–but with HIPAA and the way things are in healthcare legal world, this forum is broken.
I’ve read several reviews of doctors on the List now that they are starting to become available, and they seem to confirm what I thought would happen; most of them even sounding like the complaint described in the first reply to this thread. The situation described in the earlier post sounds like one whose cause might be more insurance-related than provider-related. Was it the doctor’s decision to require 48-hour notice for prescription refills, or was it the insurance company’s way of lowering the cost of the need to use a policy? I assure you, insurance companies do not have their policy holder’s best interest in mind. We’ll never know, of course, because the doctor cannot comment on the situation.
Why doesn’t Angie’s List review health insurance companies?
As this goes along, I truly hope I’m wrong and this won’t get out of control with hate-reviews leading to a nasty legal problems for Angie’s List. On the same hand, Angie’s List is a paid service, so someone is making money off of these posts. All the more reason some lawyer well-funded by a PPO firm could have a hay day.
Come to think of it, why doesn’t Angie’s List review lawyers. Hmmm…
Response from Angie’s List:
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Good Morning Richard,
Thank you for sharing your insight and concerns regarding Angie’s List’s Healthcare initiative. We are aware of HIPAA regulations, and sensitive to the restrictions they pose. However, medical service providers may contact the member directly to attempt to resolve outstanding issues… or if they prefer, they may respond to a member’s report indirectly.
Our Company Connect website will shortly include examples of language
that providers could use to do so (although of course, any response made is at the provider’s discretion).
Please let us know if you have any questions.
Sincerely,
Brian K.
Company Connect
Angie’s list(r)
1030 E. Washington Street
Indianapolis, IN 46202
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This is interesting. Reply indirectly to whom? A provider can’t exactly respond to Angie’s List about a patient? Why would a bogus negative reviewer remove the post of nothing can be done about it?
Brian,
Thanks for your note. Regarding the ability of healthcare providers to respond indirectly to a member’s report, how is this done? To whom are inquiries directed? Surly HIPAA forbids discussion with anyone other than the patient and other healthcare providers involved in that patient’s care. Additionally, I ponder why a malicious or vindictive post might be removed by the reviewer if nothing can be done about it short of a court order.
Other sites like doctoroogle.com address HIPAA limitations by allowing healthcare providers to remove false reports via site administrators. Will Angie’s List follow the same route?
Thanks again for your help.