Vitals.com is an edited, physician pleaser. This site edits out what the djoc wants. The site also will only allow what the doc wants the public to see. That in my book is not beneficial but deceitful and misleading to the public. What’s the point of having a doctor ratings review site if the patient/public can’t leave reviews so that the public can see them and then go from there. DR. Anthony Leazzo a D.O. out of Plainfield Illinois is one doc is particular who has abused this system. He has posted his own reviews on vitals.edited out all and any other reviews and all you can see is :”It was tough, but I found him” It’s obvious that this was put in by the doc himself Hence you can’t see anything else but this post. WEll here’s the deal with this dude.He’s a wanna -be sugeon without the surgical license. He has a woman at the fjront desk(clerical) who is taking vitals on patients. He has an untrained medical assistant giving injections,assisting him in his :”Procedures” which is probably not a good seeing he isn’t a suurgeon. He has made life/death blunders with meds and he just isn’t knowledgeable nor does he treat patients with dignity. Example : Call in to be seen (feeling sick etc). The day comes, you wait, wait, wait and wait in waiting room, and then after 2hour wait his untrained staff take your vitals, he walk s in and SITS DOWN. Yep he doesn’t get up. He does not examine you . He does not listen to your heart, your lungs or examine you. This is a poor example of what a doctor is. This person wants the glory, the title but unwilling to be a doctor who actually examines his patients. No other words other than he is an attrocity to this field.

Reality is that I am less concerned with the publics opinion about a doctor’s bedside manner than I am concerned that the doctor is properly credentialed, hasn’t had any complaints with the authorities, is who they say they are, and can be trusted.

The fact is, there are hundreds of patients of Gerald Barnes that would say he was a great doctor, despite the fact that the guy isn’t a doctor and has spent more time in prison than doctoring.

One final note on that theme is a story I heard from a doctor friend of mine. He said that he has a doctor working in his clinic that has done 3 years in prison. The governor’s husband was coming in to see him about a procedure. My friend’s comment was that you would think the Governor would have access to information to determine whether the doc working on her husband was a felon or not.

I think that says it all.

The ratings were based on a proprietary system they designed, with the implementation of their methodologies.

Healthgrades and choicetrust are other choices consumers have regarding a doctors rating, or researching their doctors.

Good luck.

Karen

The Pew Internet Project’s surveys have found (in 2004 and 2006) that 29% of internet users have looked online for info about a doctor or hospital. Our upcoming survey will separate those two and get a clean read on how many internet users are looking up doctors. The measure will be more of a “have you ever” question, though, not a frequency question.

HealthGrades has been doing this for 9 years and apparently doctor ratings from at least 2005. They trumpeted in a Nov. 2005 press release they had in-depth ratings on 600,000 physicians. Given that number has seemingly not moved much in 3 years, I’m not sure where that leaves us.

If you get 12 ratings on a doctor who has 2,000 patients, you’re at a whopping 0.6% sample. You would need, at minimum, 4,200,000 ratings to get 12 ratings on a simple majority of physicians in the U.S.

So when one of these ratings sites gets over 4,000,000 ratings, wake me up. Until then, they are providing something even worse than ratings — they are actively promoting mis-information about doctors based upon simplistic and inaccurate statistical models.

That’s the real story here.

I’d also hazard to guess, based upon my experiences in the e-Health care industry (sorry, call me cynical), that many of these sites don’t really care about their long-term goals. Their only purpose is to grow their database as quickly as possible to get to a M&A event. That’s how they plan on making money (or at least for the executives running the company).

Also, I appreciate the comments on the more favorable future prospects for online DTC prescription drug advertising now and in the future. This is exactly the type of feedback I was hoping to get by posting this analysis.

Nothing can come close to the social search effect of specialized online communities for rare diseases.

The fact that for a very large percentage of people suffering from cancer these websites are unable to provide ANY information or only incorrect data represents, IMO, a real public health issue. At a minimum these sites should be required to explain clearly what are the strict limits where they can be of use.

When one goes to Health Grades you will find some provider listings and details that are ‘free’.
Obviously these providers ‘buy their ratings (grades(
Others require you to buy the details for 12.95.

Organized medicine such as the AMA and the ABMS ought to be able to have a public data base that offers up credible and accurate information. No one should have to buy this type of information.

Other site. locate a doc. offers to track your referrals (for a fee)

No we have not attained true transparency, yet

Worse is that the gullible patient or consumer knows not what or what not he is obtaining.

Profiteering is what I call it, and any provider who lends his name to this type of endeavour only makes it worse for all of us in the long run.
Now you have to be ‘credentialled by the internet, insurers, CAQH, hospitals, state licensing boards, etc. Where will it end?