Doctors To Patients: First, Do No Yelp Harm

theodp writes "When he walked into the dentist's office, Ars Technica's Timothy B. Lee was looking for cleaner teeth, but was shown the door after expressing outrage at being asked to first sign a 'mutual privacy agreement' calling for him to transfer ownership of any public commentary he might write in the future about his experience to the good doctor. Lee reports that similar censorious copyright agreements are popping up in doctors' offices across the country. 'Doctors and dentists are understandably worried about damage to their reputations from negative reviews,' writes Lee, but 'censoring patients is the wrong way for doctors to deal with online criticism.'"

Comments

Streisand Effect

[Hatta]

Have these dentists never heard of the Streisand Effect? If anyone asked me to sign one of these I'd go right on Yelp and report it. Then everyone would know the professional in question has something to hide.

Re:Streisand Effect

[mr1911]

The Constitution says the government cannot infringe on your right to free speech. You can certainly enter into a contract to limit your speech. That is exactly what Non Disclosure Agreements are.

Re:Streisand Effect

[guspasho]

You mean like the supposedly unconscionable forced arbitration clauses? The ones that the Supreme Court just ruled are valid?

When everyone requires that you sign all your rights away as a matter of course, what rights do we have left? To to live in the woods somewhere and never interact with another human being.

Re:It's called "Being Fair"!

[zeroshade]

There is absolutely no 100% safe and effective medicinal treatment for anything. No matter what it is, there is both the possibility it might not work, might have a side effect, or what not. To claim that any medical treatment is 100% safe and effective proves that you are just shilling.

Should take more of a shrink-wrap license approach

[Valacosa]

What are they thinking? The doctors aren't thinking outside the box enough. Really, instead of getting people to sign old-fashioned contracts, they should emulate the EULA. You know, by putting up a plaque in their office which says something like this:

By entering this building, you agree to transfer to this establishment copyright on all creative works you own including but not limited to written works, drawings, photographs, spoken-word works, in perpetuity.

Amateurs.

Re:If your doctor or dentist actually needs this..

[mr1911]

It would be unenforceable. You would have been forced to sign under duress to seek potentially life saving treatment, if you were able to sign at all.

Re:If your doctor or dentist actually needs this..

[h4rr4r]

You would have to go to court and spend thousands of dollars you may not have to fight such a thing.

Legal or not, the mere cost of fighting it will silence many people.

Re:If your doctor or dentist actually needs this..

[rotide]

I'm not sold on this. If I was a dentist, lets say, and I want good reviews, I'll ask my customers to please rate me on such and such a site. You will _always_ have bad reviews and as a person who frequently reads reviews, I know how to filter out good and badly written reviews. If there are 10 great reviews and one complaining that the service wasn't covered under insurance or something like that, I wouldn't hold it against the dentist.

What's even more interesting, is that I actively seek out the bad reviews. When it comes to game reviews, for example, I go to the compilation sites like gamerankings etc, and purposely read the reviews that rated the game the worst. You can tell a lot about a game by the way the critical reviewers tear it apart. Maybe they only gripe about the graphics or something that just doesn't matter to me. If that's all they can muster, I can usually count on a quality experience.

Same happened when I was searching for a new dentist. The one I picked had some negative reviews, but they all boiled down to "while they were friendly and made you feel at ease.. (some complaint about money here)." So the negative review may or may not hurt "my" dentist in the long run, but I picked him because of the CONTENT of those negative reviews. The worst thing people could say was some of the stuff he did didn't end up covered fully under their particular insurance plans, that sucks, but it's your job to make sure the work will be covered before submitting to it!

In the end, the ones that censor reviews, usually have a reason why they fear them.

I can kind of understand

[Missing.Matter]

I kind of understand where these Dentists are coming from. I used to work at a pool construction company that was heavily impacted by unwarranted negative reviews online.

Pool owners are the worst; they're usually well off, used to getting their way, and generally don't understand how construction time tables work. They usually start thinking of a pool in March, or April, and want it done and open for Memorial Day or the 4th of July. They usually don't understand we have more than one customer who all also want their pool done on the same timeframe. Further, they don't understand we can't work in bad weather, which means time tables tend to slip in the rainy season.

So inevitably, people get delayed and it's the end of the world for them because they won't have their pool open for their all important Memorial Day BBQ. So they fly online and rant and rave about how awful our business is, because they couldn't read their contract. And of course, if you type our name into Google, the first three results that come up are from ripoffreports.com or a similar site.

What's worse is these stay online forever. We've made most all of our customers happy in the end, and they've told us they would take down or redact the negative reviews, but even they can't. So because they flew off the handle despite our goodwill efforts, we're the ones that have to suffer.

So, while I feel like the Doctor's approach isn't the most tactful, I understand where he's coming form.

Re:I can kind of understand

[ibpooks]

The difference though is that, unlike other businesses, doctors are legally forbidden from disputing bad reviews. HIPPA (U.S. patient privacy law) doesn't even allow doctors to acknowledge that a particular person was in fact a patient, let alone specifically addressing the elements of his complaint. This creates an unfair situation whereby patients (or even fake patients) can say whatever they want about the doctor and he cannot legally confirm or deny any of the allegations against him without acknowledging the person was a patient.

Duress?

[RingDev]

I would be curious if the threat of withholding health services could be considered duress.

-Rick

Re:"Betters?"

[spun]

Original post was saying the average person has no right to criticize, as the average person is a "faux connoisseur." I was responding to this elitist post, a post that was engaging in class warfare by claiming the average person has no right to complain, as they are all just whiny egotistical complainers who are too stupid to critique the goods and services they receive.

Bullshit. This is just another elitist moaning that his sheep-like customers aren't being as sheep-like as they are supposed to be. How DARE they get together and compare notes? How is he supposed to take advantage of them, as is his right as an elite, if they actually talk to each other? There aught to be a law!

Re:It's called "Being Fair"!

[Artifakt]

By a recent study, so is brisk walking, but combining the two can be a trifle awkward.