HealthcareReviews.com

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Overview

Launched in 2006 to service the USA and Canada, Healthcare Reviews stated goal is to improve the healthcare system through patient feedback and advocacy. Since then it has expanded to include a sister site for the European Union in 2007, the first such website in Europe.

HealthcareReviews.com is a patient driven review site similar to a growing number of consumer ratings sites such as Epinions and service review sites like RateMyProfessors.

This website has the distinct characteristic of an all encompassing healthcare scope and larger geographic coverage, they are not limited to doctor ratings. Users can rate doctors, hospitals, dentists, nurses, clinics, medicine, alternative healthcare and all other healthcare providers in the USA, Canada and the European Union.

Users

Anyone who goes to the website may post a rating and review of any healthcare practitioner, hospital or even medicine. Users rate healthcare workers and institutions on their knowledge, wait times, cost, helpfullness and an overall general rating using a scale of 1-10. In addition users can post small comments.

Criticism

Rating and review websites have been rightfully criticized as being a place for people to rant AbOUT others. This site does make a greater effort than other rating sites to encourage positive feedback, emphasizing the importance of rewarding good healthcare practitioners and the benefits to other patients who might choose to deal with them in the future.

Unlike other ratings websites there is no registration procedure requiring email verification or a cookies requirement. This provides an increased level of anonymity to protect users who fear reprisals from their own doctor or even slander lawsuits if their comments were traced back through a court order. This has also opened it up for abuse by individuals (ie. disgruntled employees) wishing to slander an individual or organization who would not otherwise make such posts for fear of being traced back to them.

Future

Healthcare centers and private sector software engineers have begun to recognize the need and benefits of online (or intranet) patient feedback and are creating similar internal websites in an attempt to improve their services and avoid malpractice suits. Healthcare Reviews will still have a greater transparency and objectivity than these internal websites (who will keep data private for internal reviews) as there is no inherent conflict of interest and will remain of greater benefit to the general public.

References

See also