Skip Doctor-Rating Websites

The Internet allows people to rate just about anything, so you’d think that rate-your-doctor websites would be a useful, possibly even live-saving resource, right? Not so, writes Kent Sepkowitz for Slate. A physician himself, Sepkowitz set out to find out what he could learn about himself and various colleagues. What did he find? "Zilch. The online doctor rating system has a shocking lack of useful information."

The sites are short on reviews—one notes it has 5,709 patient reviews for 137,832 listed doctors. Even pay sites were similarly threadbare. And when Sepkowitz finally found a single, negative review of himself on one site, he found he could simply praise himself five or six times under different aliases, which quickly raised him to the level of “suggested doctor.” As a physician, he recommends you "click elsewhere."
(More doctor stories.)