Websites like Yelp, Google+ Local, and Angie’s List allow users to review and tell their experience they’ve had with a business establishment regardless of it being negative or positive. As a reviewer you can discuss your experience at the doctor’s office, how that cup of Joe at the local coffee shop was, or your experience at the local baseball field. But what happens when a bad experience turns into a bad review? According to Forrester Research those negative reviews can have a significant downside when it comes to consumer behavior.
Recently a Minnesota based doctor decided to take a stand against a reviewer that made some rather harsh comments. Dr. David McKee of Duluth decided to sue the negative reviewer and the case has made its way to the Minnesota Supreme Court. McKee’s lawyer stated that the physician’s reputation is on the line and he does not want it tainted because of damaging reviews. While this makes complete sense, does this issue warrant escalation to an individual state Supreme Court?
Many of the issues stemming from the negative review of Dr. McKee’s practice seem to be focused around a handful of statements the reviewer left including a named nurse that never existed at the practice. The lawsuit is set to be ruled upon in the upcoming months.
This isn’t the first time legal action has been taken against a patient’s negative review. A dentist in a suburb of Portland, OR took a now former patient to court regarding a negative review left on Yelp and several other sites. The Oregon dentist was seeking damages in the amount of $300,000 for lost profits, emotional distress and damages to his reputation. While this suit did not make its way to the Oregon Supreme Court, the lawsuit was recently thrown out of court as the judge sited the negative reviews as freedom of speech.
As the world changes in a way that online reputations become more and more important in the professional world, keeping a positive online reputation becomes more and more imperative. Here at MDWebPro we offer a free online review monitoring service that monitors over 20 high traffic review sites. The review monitoring tool is free and extremely easy to set up for you and your practice.
You can take our free monitoring tool for a test run and stay on top of what your patients and clients are saying about you and your practice. While a negative review doesn’t mean the end of the world for you and your practice, it does affect how your practice is perceived in the public’s eye.
Do you have any additional thoughts on of patient reviews should be handled?
Nice post Stuart. In addition to monitoring for reviews and mentions of your practice, I would also recommend physicians consider being as proactive as possible with online reviews and ask their best clients/patients for reviews. They can easily print up cards with shortened url’s to the review site, link out to the review site from their own website, or even email email their best clients/patients. Doctors probably aren’t so inclined to be this proactive, but not ignoring it is a bad strategy. I wrote a related post about it here, http://www.39celsius.com/how-to-get-rid-of-bad-yelp-review/
I agree with the commenter above but understand why doctors don’t want to partcipate in this normally uneven playing field.
Physicians and dentists can control their online reputation and engage patients online at http://www.HealthcareReviews.com though.
Registered users can respond to or even censor annonymous patient comments. It’s the only rating site around that empowers the doctor and it’s a free service, this is a site worth being proactive on by referring patients here.
I did not intend to make “harsh remarks.” It was not my intention to use any descriptions or conclusions. It was also not my intention to claim that I had proof. Only my family and the doctor were in the room. My intention was to portray my recollection of what happened in my father’s room. The public could decide what to believe and what – if any – impact it had on them: insensitive doctor or overly-sensitive consumer?
This entire experience has been distressing to my family. We were initially shocked and blindsided by “jocular” comments made so soon after my father’s stroke by somebody who didn’t know us. We were overwhelmed by my being sued after posting a consumer opinion, and we were shocked by the rapidity with which it happened. It has been the 800 pound gorilla in the room. My parents would be 88-year-old witnesses. My mother and wife prefer no discussion, because they don’t want to think about it. Conversation with my father only reminds him of his anger over this situation. My siblings and children don’t often bring it up, because they don’t know how to say anything helpful. I have been demoralized by three years of being called “Defendant Laurion” in public documents. While being sued for defamation, I have been called a passive aggressive, an oddball, a liar, a coward, a bully, a malicious person, and a zealot family member. I’ve been said to have run a cottage industry vendetta, posting 108 adverse Internet postings in person or through proxies. That’s not correct. In reality, I posted ratings at three consumer rating sites, deleted them, and never rewrote them again.
What it’s like for a patient or family member to be caught up in a case like this was already described by the plaintiff’s lawyer in a Star Tribune newspaper article, “Company sues over info put on Yahoo message board,” August 27, 2001, and repeated in http://chronicle.augusta.com/stories/2001/08/27/bus_321610.shtml .
It said in part:
[ Message-board participants have the right under the First Amendment to voice their opinions. That freedom is troublesome for companies and their legal and public-relations staffs, which wince about the complaints and scramble to correct inaccurate information that could be posted by consumers, investors, employees or competitors. “If a company sues, alleging simple business disparagement or perhaps defamation, its goal isn’t necessarily to win,” said Marshall Tanick, a First Amendment expert at Mansfield & Tanick in Minneapolis. “The strategy is to force the other person to incur huge legal expenses that will deter them and others from making such statements,” he said.
The plaintiff’s first contact with me was a letter that said in part that he had the means and motivation to pursue me. The financial impact of being sued three years to date has been burdensome, a game of financial attrition that I haven’t wanted to play. The suit cost me the equivalent of two year’s net income – the same as 48 of my car payments plus 48 of my house payments. My family members had to dip into retirement funds to help me.
After receipt of a threat letter, I deleted my rate-your-doctor site postings and sent confirmation emails to opposing counsel. Since May of 2010, postings on the Internet by others include newspaper accounts of the lawsuit; readers’ remarks about the newspaper accounts; and blog opinion pieces written by doctors, lawyers, public relations professionals, patient advocates, and information technology experts. Dozens of websites by doctors, lawyers, patient advocates, medical students, law schools, consumer advocates, and free speech monitors posted opinions that a doctor or plumber shouldn’t sue the family of a customer for a bad rating. These authors never said they saw my deleted ratings – only the news coverage. Newspaper stories have caused people to call or write me to relate their own medical experiences. I’ve referred them to my lawyers. I’ve also received encouragement from other persons who have been sued over accusations of libel or slander.
Medical peer newsletters or magazines that interviewed the plaintiff did not approach me. Websites maintained by doctors for doctors or lawyers for lawyers often caused an inference that I was a zealot family member or somebody who had asked about my dad’s chances and then shot the messenger. Generally, however, those websites echoed other websites in advising public relations responses other than a lawsuit – for fear of creating the “Streisand Effect.” As a retired layman, I brought far less resources to the battle of financial attrition.
I’ve learned that laws about slander and libel do not conform to one’s expectations. I’ve read that online complaints are safe “if you stick to the facts.” That’s exactly the wrong advice. I did not want to merely post my conclusions. I wanted to stick to my recollection of what I’d heard. I don’t like to read generalities like “I’m upset. He did not treat my father well. He was insensitive. He didn’t spend enough time in my opinion.” However, such generalities are excused as opinion, hyperbole, or angry utterances. If one purports to say what happened, factual recitations can be litigated. The plaintiff must prove the facts are willfully misstated, but the defendant can go broke while waiting through the effort.
I feel that defamation lawsuits are much too easy for wealthy plaintiffs. If I were to attempt suing a doctor for malpractice, my case would not proceed until I’d obtained an affidavit from another doctor, declaring that the defendant’s actions did not conform to established procedures. In a defamation suit, there’s generally no exit short of a judge’s dismissal order – which can be appealed by the plaintiff. Being called “defendant” is terribly personal, but the civil suit path is totally impersonal. During the three years that I went through depositions, interrogatories, a dismissal hearing, an appellate hearing, and a state Supreme Court hearing; I never once spoke to a judge. At depositions, the plaintiff and I sat opposite each other, while I answered his lawyer’s questions, and he answered my lawyer ‘s questions. We were not to speak to each other.