Search all of the Society for Participatory Medicine website:Search

For years Doc Tom urged us to facilitate patients’ publicly rating doctors as a way to accelerate e-pateints movement. Alan (DrGreene) was excited about this, even though he was a physician, but I was afraid it would open Pandora’s box. In the winter of 2006 we had another conversation with Doc Tom about patients rating doctors. I didn’t have a tape recorder, so I can’t quote him, but I walked away understanding that figuring this out needed to be a priority. Tom’s vision was a rating system much like amazon.com for books, Yahoo! for movies, and a thousand other sites for everything from restaurants to mechanics. My concern was that people might only review a physician after they’d had a bad experience and while that information is helpful, what e-patients really want to find out is “who is the best doctor me?”

With Tom’s gentle push forward we formed a relationship with a start-up to create a review database that encourages people to rate their favorite doctors. Shortly after our time with Doc Tom we had a conversation with Gale Wilson-Steel, founder of CareSeek. She was very excited about getting patients to review doctors, but Alan shared with her an idea he’s long held – nurses have a birds-eye view of physicians and are able to evaluate medical knowledge, patient rapport, and skill. With our prompting, Gale founded a companion company — Nurses Rate Doctors. Both sites share a database to create a comprehensive pool of physician ratings focusing on identifying and reviewing the best doctors in every specialty. Nurses are offered incentives such as free (very cool) CME opportunities to encourage them to share their observations.

And now it’s here — DrGreene.CareSeek.com is open to all, as a place for anyone looking for a great doctor and everyone who wants to rate the doctors they know. For this tool to really be effective, we need people (just like you) to review your doctors. So login now! It’s quick. It’s easy. And it will make a difference.

Thanks Doc Tom. You’re still making a big difference!

Cheryl Greene, Co-Founder and Executive Producer, DrGreene.com

 

Please consider supporting the Society by joining us today! Thank you.

Donate