Time for a "Fantasy Doctor League"?

Posted Tuesday, June 3, 2008 to PROCEDURES > Body

Posted by mmoore

Even though I'm a younger guy who's loved the Steelers all his life, I never cared much about the whole fantasy football phenomenon. The truth is, there just seemed to be too many players involved, too many details to keep track of. After all, it's just a game.

But when it comes to your health, now that's serious business. And "keeping score" on the case doctors are providing seems like an extremely good idea to me. Good old fashioned word of mouth traditionally has been a solid way to evaluate a surgeon's skills, but technology has brought us something even better (and far more empirical): rate your doctor Web sites.

As a writer with a medical Web site company, I work with professionals ranging from heart surgeons in Denver, Colorado to plastic surgeons in Columbia, Maryland. We affiliate ourselves with some of the top doctors in their fields and work closely to protect their reputations and help them reach patient communities online.

I see a lot of benefit in harnessing the networking capabilites of the Web to help people pool their opinions and comments about doctors. The net result should be improved care, with more patients choosing those doctors who receive positive reviews and steering clear of those on the losing end of the equation.

My biggest concern is the way in which these rating systems are developed and tweaked along the way. Obviously, people shouldn't be allowed to flame doctors anonymously, with no proof that they even had treatment from that physician. On the other side, you don't want people who have been justly wronged to feel intimidated about leaving honest feedback about their experience.

This reminds me of the recent feedback rule changes at eBay. Turns out, too many buyers using the site felt they would be "punished" by sellers with negative feedback if they left negative feedback. This lead to a failure of the feedback system -  people didn't feel comfortable calling out the bad apples. For our clients, I worry about the opposite situation occurring - too many people being able to criticize doctors without the doctors having sufficient leverage to respond.

Sooner or later, a fair rating system will be developed, and I'm sure that patients, along with our clients - talented plastic surgeons in Columbia, Maryland, dedicated dentists in Los Angeles, and the like - will be the beneficiaries. After all, if you have a health or beauty concern, who do you want on your team?

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