Slashdot Mirror
Doctors Sue Patients for Online Complaints
Carl Bialik writes "'Several Web sites have sprung up that encourage patients to post anonymous reviews of doctors and dentists. Some frustrated patients have even created entire Web sites to criticize specific physicians. The Wall Street Journal Online is reporting that some doctors are, in turn, defending their reputation by suing the online critics."
Free speech does not give the right to libel. It never has, and that has not changed with advent of the Internet.
Remember the last election? We had "free speech zones." People who disagreed with the politicians' (both Right and Left) point of view were told to go somewhere else to protest. And furthermore, it was illegal for the press to enter those areas.
We no longer have real free speech in our country. Sure we can open a titty-bar. Sure we can show boobies on HBO. But if the status quo doesn't want the truth to be said, be it the government or the medical establishment, they'll stomp it out. Get used to it. The 60s are over folks.
If someone says he and his monkey have nothing to hide, they almost certainly do.
Sounds like more states need anti-SLAPP laws.
"It's the height of ridiculousness to say for those 9 lines you get hundreds of millions."
Seriously though, if the patients are reporting on their experience, then that is not slander. Just stick to the facts and they should be fine.
There are two kinds of factual statemnts:
1) true statements, and;
2) false statements.
Unless the statement is inherently contradictory, there's no way to know whether a factual statement is true just by looking at it, on (for instance) a website devoted to doctor's reviews of patients.
You can't have meaningful, productive free speech with perfect anonymity, because there's no accountibility possible in that scenario. People must be ultimately accountible for their statements, if those statements are aired in public. Even though it rarely comes up on the Internet (most of what we say is nonsense, wnayway), an aggrieved party still needs to have the ability to unmask you in order to sue you for libel. If the big, bad mean doctors are protected, so are the rest of us good folks.
If what they are saying is not factual then it should be very clearly presented as nothing more than an opinion. The free flow of information like this is an integral part of capitalism.
IANAL but while I believe that the doctors can sue for false information posted online that can be shown to cause damages they would have to file a suit, prove that the information posted online is false and not solely an opinion. They have no grounds to prevent people from posting their comments and can only file a suit after the fact (that is, prior restraint is not allowed). Imagine if M$ decided to sue for every "Windows Sucks" or other anti-M$ comment on slashdot.
Unfortunately, lawsuits are expensive, but the most likely result will be some sort of disclaimer or the site simply removing the offensive (whether true or not) comments.
I'm not a lawyer, and I'm not a doctor, but I'm pretty sure that the Non-Disclosure agreement is entirely a one-way contract.
The Doctor is bound to not disclose information to 3rd parties (except within the pre-defined bounds of their privacy policy). The patient is certainly free to discuss the details of his or her healthcare with anyone they wish.
I really don't understand what non-disc agreement would ever be in place that would stop a patient from discussing his medical care with 3rd parties. The patient OWNS that information.
Are patients allowed to "badmouth" their doctors online? How is this different (apart from scope) from "word of mouth"?
Are doctors not allowed recourse to protect they "good name", particularly those with private practices where this would essentially equate to their livelihood?
There is merit to most of the comments made above.
However, keep in mind that there are many factors that are not immediately obvious to many of the posters here:
1) Medicine *is difficult*. You cannot become a doctor simply by memorising rules for 4 years (or 6 years in most countries). Unfortunately, human minds and bodies refuse to obey fixed rules and often there are more exceptions than there are rules. While many illnesses may be both straightforward and easy to diagnose and treat, invariably one has to deal with patients where things are not clear, where the diagnosis is not obvious, where the standard treatment for specified condition may do more harm than good; being supremely skilled at invasive procedures does not guarantee that a patient may not come to harm from a complication.
There is no "black or white", no definitive test to diagnose everything, not golden therapy to treat everything.Situations like these can only be dealt with using knowledge and drawing from personal and collective experience. That does mean unfortunately that it's not always possible to get it right - wrong diagnoses are made, wrong treatments are given, complications may occur from a procedure - but that does not necessarily make a doctor "bad". For the patient though this may be catastrophic, something which doctors are acutely aware of.
But if an error occured in good faith, should that doctor be splattered on a web page?
2) As with any profession, there are people in it for the money only and will stop at nothing to get it. However, in most cases this is not what affects patients. In many european countries (i can't speak for the USA) doctors are put in a position where they have to deal with rare and serious conditions outside of their expertise and/or are made to do so in extremely stressful environments (long hours, being paged by 6 different people simultaneously etc). Medical and para-medical staff do their best to cope, in most cases successfully, but occasionally problems will arise from this.
Just think: If you were trying to calculate your taxes after working for 36 hours and people kept phoning you and knocking on your door and your 3-year old kept screaming - how well do you think you'd do?
3) A surprising number of patients seek medical attention without any real physical disease; anxiety is a common theme and can lead to great problems in the patient-doctor relationship. It is tough for medical/nursing staff to deal with very anxious people, as they are treated as emotional punching bags and it can be tough for these patients as anxiety often cannot be "talked away"; they really feel unwell and cannot understand why. At the same time this does not mean that there is nothing wrong with the patient. To put it bluntly - just because they're mad doesn't mean there's nothing wrong with 'em.
But not infrequently it is people with high degree of anxiety that are the most vitriolic against medical staff, in spite best efforts from both nurses and doctors.
These are just a few points from a medical perspective. One of the greatest problems in patient-doctor relationships is communication. Problems here are what frequently will lead to litigation for various reasons. But the problem may not necessarily lie with the doctor, as communication is a 2-way street (for example, i make it common practice to repeat myself ad nauseam as it can be startling what some people just don't retain or refuse to take in [denial]).
Of course, there are doctors not up to the task and perhaps should not be practising medicine for whatever reason. But I believe that these should be investigated by a professional body to assess their