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Doctors' Quality and Incentives

11/20/2020

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Also see lists of US Doctors:
Who offers long appointments?
Who treats you in both hospital and office?
Who has wide experience with procedures you need?
And data on Hospitals or Medicare and other patients

A. Financial Conflicts of Interest 

B. Doctors Reviewed by Doctors

          Consumer Checkbook
          Top Doctors
          SuperDoctors
          Referrals
          Disciplinary Actions

C. Doctors Reviewed by Statistics
          Consumer Checkbook
          ProPublica
          Chest Surgeons
          Cardiologists
          California
​          Other databases

D. Doctors Reviewed by Patients
          General
          Dentists
          RateMDs
          AngiesList
          Vitals

E. Patterns of Complaints by Patients

F. No Privacy on the Web: Tracking Your Search for Doctors

G. Hospitals' Quality

 (Many sites below track your IP address; you can check their privacy statements.)

While searching for doctors, be aware of the stress they are under. A cardiologist writes, "We can't be perceived as less than 100% capable. We can't take medications in case it will affect our performance. We find it difficult to admit that we aren't the perfect person that our patients expect us to be. We belong to the only profession on the planet where we are accused of thinking we are God and then sued when we are not."

A. Financial Conflicts of Interest

Doctors get many pressures which affect patient care. The Journal of the American Medical Association (JAMA) May 2 2017 summarizes a lot of research and has a proposal that doctors be paid by salary, to avoid:
  • incentives to over-treat, when paid per procedure
  • incentives to under-treat, when paid a flat rate per patient, or rewarded for cutting costs
They say salaries, without performance reviews for profit and loss, are, "the most promising solution... adopted by a variety of health systems, such as the Mayo Clinic, the Cleveland Clinic, and the Kaiser group". They ask the Medical Students Association to rate medical schools on how they pay their doctors. These students already rate medical schools on conflicts of interest with industry, though they allow industry gifts for student use. In the meantime patients can ask doctors at groups, medical schools or hospitals if they are paid more or less when they order more procedures.

Practices with 2 or more primary care doctors were analyzed in a July 2015 study in Annals of Family Medicine (632 practices surveyed 2012-13):
  • A quarter of practices paid each doctor entirely based on the services they billed ("productivity" right side of the graph).
  • A quarter of practices paid each doctor by straight salary. No word how it was set.
  • The rest had a mix, shown in the graph. No word on how many doctors each type of practice covered.
  • The study had a 50% response, and excluded solo practices. 
  • Most solo practitioners receive income per procedure, and take home what is left after they pay staff, office and other costs (concierge doctors are exceptions).
  • In the graph, the right side is light grey from top to bottom (100% salary). The left edge is dark gray (100% quality or miscellaneous payments). A big area in the left middle is medium grey from top to bottom (100% based on services billed). In other areas the amount of each color shows the amount of income received that way.
Graph showing doctor pay practices at 632 practices
Doctors' average incomes (after expenses)  by specialty range from $200,000 per year for Public Health and Pediatrics to $500,000 for Plastic Surgery and Orthopedics, with wide variation. Concierge (2% of doctors) and cash-only (5%) doctors earn slightly more than average, comparable to other self-employed doctors. 13% are direct primary care doctors, generally subscription-based but lower fees than concierge. Three quarters do not charge for no-shows, whatever their policies may say. 70% see patients for 45 hours per week or less, but they spend 10 hours or more on paperwork and administration.  A fifth to a quarter of most specialties would not choose medicine again if they had the chance. Wealth averages $1-2 million, depending on specialty and age. A quarter of doctors have over $1 million by the time they are 35, and two thirds do by the time they are 50.

​Most doctors at hospitals work for large groups (TeamHealth, Schumacher) which contract to provide hospitalists, radiologists, emergency doctors, etc. Some companies provide doctors to hundreds of hospitals (Envision + Amsurg). Hospital doctors earn $200,000 - $400,000 per year. About half feel fairly compensated. Only a quarter "regularly" discuss the cost of treatment with patients. 

Payments from industry to doctors are discussed on the drugs page.

 B. DOCTORS REVIEWED BY DOCTORS

Some operating rooms record interactions so teams can review and improve. You can't see the recordings, but having them may give better care.

Patients can use published surveys to find doctors recommended by other doctors.

Consumer Checkbook asks doctors to recommend other doctors in big metro areas, and provides the counts for doctors recommended most often (list of counties). They also count patient recommendations for primary care doctors (in Boston, Chicago, DC, Delaware Valley, Puget Sound, San Francisco, and Twin Cities areas), so you need to read column headings carefully to be sure whether you are seeing ratings by doctors or by patients. In "more filters" you can sort by number of recommendations or distance from a zip code (if you selected "search by zip code"). 

"We regularly send surveys to all actively practicing physicians in the 53 largest metropolitan areas in the U.S. and ask them to tell us which one or two specialists in each of 35 or more different specialty fields they 'would consider most desirable for care of a loved one.' " ($28 online). Their research says that in general these doctors also:
  • "Get much higher ratings than other doctors when we survey patients.
  • Are much more likely than other doctors to be board certified.
  • Are less likely than other doctors to have disciplinary actions filed against them with state medical boards.
  • In surgical specialties for which we have good data on outcomes, have better results."
Many city magazines publish lists of:
  • "Top Doctors" selected by editors at Castle Connolly ($2/month), or 
  • "SuperDoctors" selected by editors at MSP Communications. 
Both sources start with nominations from doctors around the country (ballot box can be stuffed) and end with editors' review based on many other criteria. These are not simply doctors' votes like Checkbook.

ABCNews reports that other lists are not competitive and include many bad doctors: TopDocs, Consumer's Research Council of America, etc.

A 1999 study found that doctors were more likely to be in such lists "if they trained in prestigious residencies (P<0.01) or fellowships (P<0.05), or if they had an academic appointment (P<0.05) or 15 or more years of experience (P<0.001)."

Referral services also select doctors they think are high quality, and you pay for the referral.

Malpractice and disciplinary cases (rare) are another place where some doctors are reviewed.

C. DOCTORS REVIEWED BY STATISTICS

The best statistics are at the following separate links:
Doctors' Experience with a procedure
Average Time spent with patients

Less helpful are:
Outcomes
discussed below
Outcomes are described in the following paragraphs, but first a warning: All statistics on outcomes create pressure to "cream" or "cherry-pick," i.e., treat the healthiest patients and deny treatment to the sickest patients (saying, "you're not a good candidate for treatment" or having long delays even for urgent appointments). Deadly examples are in two sample articles in The Guardian and the New York Times. Measuring and rewarding doctors can also backfire and reduce quality by reducing motivation (see a very good, broad article on these effects).

Skewing Outcomes: CHQPR gives good examples of the harmful effects of using outcomes to measure doctor quality, and recommends instead using (1) compliance with Clinical Practice Guidelines or documneted reasons to differ, and (2) monitoring all patients with a validated tool such as WMI. Such monitoring also needs a measure of maximum wait times for existing patients, which could drive the sickest patients out of the practice, and a measure of excess referrals to hospice and palliative care.

Studies find that doctors avoid treating risky patients, when there is public reporting of outcomes. For example doctors who treat narrowing of the coronary arteries (for example to treat or prevent heart attacks, PCI-Percutaneous Coronary Intervention) in New York and Massachusetts have the death rates of their patients publicly reported, and these doctors avoid PCI on the riskiest patients, even if it might help the patient, since the higher death rate will hurt the doctor's or hospital's reputation.
  • 75% have decided not to perform PCI in a patient due, at least in part, to protecting the doctor's or hospital's success rate
  • 74%  sometimes or often delay PCI to see if the patient dies first.
  • 95% say other doctors avoid doing PCIs on risky patients.
  • 60% have been pressured by colleagues to avoid them.
  • 52% worry their superiors won't support a decision to do PCI on a risky patient.

Groups which report outcomes often say they adjust for initial health to put all patients on a level field, but the adjustments are very weak. They have low explanatory power, and few variables: "the most assiduous work on risk adjustment has produced tools of only moderate power. The prospects for solving this problem with improved risk adjustment are not promising.[4],[5]"

Consumer Checkbook rates individual surgeons on death (within 90 days) and total bad outcomes, SurgeonRatings.org. They use Medicare patients 2009-12, and only report surgeons with results significantly above average. Unlike their hospital data, they unwisely exclude hospice patients from the surgeons' results (p.3). Few patients would have these surgeries if they were on hospice, so they must have gone on hospice after surgery. These deaths are no more or less attributable to surgery than any other deaths in 90 days. They acknowledge a random level of deaths in any population, unrelated to surgery, and exclude it with statistical tests. 

Surgeons' total bad outcomes for Checkbook include deaths within 90 days, atypically long hospital stays (indicating major complications), and readmissions within 90 days of initial hospital discharge. They seem to include all readmissions, even unrelated to the surgery, so they penalize surgeons who take on patients sicker than average. They say they adjust for patient riskiness, without details about which variables they use. They do list the "c statistic" for each adjustment, ranging from 0.626 to 0.913 (pp.14-39). The c statistic ha a scale of 0.5 to 1, where 0.5 means their equations do no better than chance, and 1 means their equations are perfect.  "Models are typically considered reasonable when the C-statistic is higher than 0.7 and strong when C exceeds 0.8 (Hosmer & Lemeshow, 2000; Hosmer & Lemeshow, 1989)." So some equations are little better than chance, and they still rate surgeons with them.  They cover (definitions on pp.9-13): 
Angioplasty or Pacemaker Surgery
Aortic or Endovascular Surgery
Endarterectomy/Head or Neck Muscle Angioplasty
Femur Fracture Surgery
Gallbladder Removal Surgery 
Gastric Surgery
Heart Valve or Heart Bypass Surgery
Hernia Surgery
Hip or Knee Replacement Surgery
Hysterectomy and Cystocele/Rectocele Repair Surgery
Major Bowel Surgery
Prostate Removal Surgery
Pulmonary Surgery
Spinal Cord Exploration or Spine Fusion Surgery

ProPublica almost simultaneously with Checkbook in 2015 released death and complication rates for all surgeons with at least 20 surgeries during 2009-13, in the categories below. They count deaths during the same hospital stay as the operation, and wisely do not exclude hospice deaths (p.5). As "complications" they count readmissions within 30 days if these are for diagnoses considered likely to be related to the original surgery. These are 46% of all 30-day readmissions (p.6). They count a surgeon as having a "high" complication rate, based on their best single estimate, even if his/her confidence interval extends all the way into the "low" range.

ProPublica limits the data to elective surgeries, which usually involve healthy patients, but can include patients with other serious conditions, as long as these do not prevent the operation, conditions such as diabetes, dialysis, weak immune systems, etc. They say they adjust data based on the sickness of the patients, but they tried only one summary measure of all health conditions, and it had little effect (pp.10-11, with column heads defined on p.4). Age has the most effect, but they group it into 5-year categories, instead of using exact years of age (maybe because of data availability?). They do not provide summaries of their equations' power, but do acknowledge that their adjustments for surgeons' differing patients make only a "small difference" (p.13). For each equation they provide the standard deviation of the random effects (ranef sigma), which they interpret to mean most of the variation is among surgeons, not hospitals (p.15). They cover (definitions on App.1-3): 
  1. Knee Replacement-Replace diseased knee joint with an artificial knee.
  2. Hip Replacement-Replace diseased hip joint with an artificial hip joint.
  3. Cervical (Neck) Spinal Fusion-The fusing of two or more vertebrae of the neck, using orthopedic devices to hold them in place.
  4. Lumbar Spinal Fusion, Posterior Technique-The fusing of two or more vertebrae in the lower back, performed on the back portion of the spine.
  5. Lumbar Spinal Fusion, Anterior Technique-The fusing of two or more vertebrae in the lower back, performed on the front portion of the spine.
  6. Prostate Resection-The resection and removal of a portion of the prostate through the urethra.
  7. Prostate Removal-The removal of the entire prostate gland via the open or laparoscopic or robotic method.
  8. Gallbladder Removal, Laparoscopic-Minimally invasive gallbladder removal.
ProPublica lists some critiques and praise of their apprach. Note Rand's critique says ProPublica uses deaths within 30 days (pp.2, 6), but ProPublica confirms they use "deaths during the initial surgical stay", though twice they say ambiguously "deaths and readmissions to a hospital within 30 days"; and here.

Levy says the profession keeps secret a better scorecard, NSQIP.
​
Chest surgeons show 3-star ratings on about 500 hospitals and 500 group practices (typically the group of surgeons operating at a hospital), for
  • Coronary artery bypass grafts (CABG) and
  • Aortic valve replacements (AVR).
You can search by state, not by city. They define measures (deaths in 30 days, complications, best practice), but do not say what the cutoffs are for each star, nor how they adjust for patient sickness or where they get data.

Cardiologists show 4-star ratings for use of recommended drugs by a few hospitals after
  • Implanting Cardiac Defibrillators, and
  • Diagnostic Catheterization and Percutaneous Coronary Intervention (PCI/Angioplasty)
You can search by state, city or metro area. They report the numbers of each procedure, saying, "The number of ... procedures a site performs does not necessarily indicate higher quality, but it may be an indication of how experienced this site is with the procedure." They do not report outcomes, nor what the cutoffs are for each star, nor where they get data. They list 2,000 hospitals, but have counts and stars for only a few.

California has a rating system for doctor groups with HMO members:
  • colorectal cancer screening of adults 50-75
  • lower back pain patients who had X-ray, MRI, or CT scan within 28 days of the diagnosis (fewer is considered better)
  • diabetes/blood: kidney function screenings, HA1c blood sugar testing, HbA1c <8.0%, blood pressure <140/90, cholesterol screenings, cholesterol LDL-C <100

New York shows deaths within 30 days after a procedure for individual heart surgeons and cardiologists. You can filter by name of doctor and/or hospital, and region of the state. They describe methods and definitions for the surgeon and cardiologist data. Another NY site has profiles of all doctors, but does not link to the death rates.

​Other databases are described by JAMA Surgery.

​CMS Qualified Entities are allowed to use Medicare claims data, in order to provide quality measures on doctors, but it is not clear if any have yet released quality measures.

Delayed appointments are frustrating and can drive the sickest patients out of a medical practice, which would ironically improve its quality statistics
  • California has had serious delays for patients getting appointment in HMOs,  and took 7 years to issue very loose rules on HMO appointment delays.
  • https://www.latimes.com/archives/la-xpm-2010-jan-19-la-fi-health-access19-2010jan19-story.html
  • https://www.dmhc.ca.gov/HealthCareinCalifornia/YourHealthCareRights/TimelyAccesstoCare.aspx
MGMA says,
  • "Patients should be called from a waiting list in order of clinical priority. Therefore, having a standard format that includes patients’ concerns and conditions is imperative to prioritize clinical importance."
  • https://www.mgma.com/data/data-stories/how-long-are-patients-waiting-for-an-appointment
  • That approach lets triage give long waits to some of the sickest, the ones where the practice feels least able to help them.

D. DOCTORS REVIEWED BY PATIENTS

Patient reviews tell if a doctor speaks clearly and listens, as well as giving early warning of problems. Dr Wen of George Washington U and Dr Kosowsky of Harvard say doctors need to communicate well with patients to get information for a good diagnosis:
  • "Choose someone who makes time to listen to you and answer your questions... and who engages you in a discussion of your diagnosis. By the same token, watch out for doctors who display signs of impatience, intolerance, condescension, or inflexibility" (p. 211). 

Wen's and Kosowsky's book goes on to describe in detail how patients need to prepare before seeing a doctor. 

Patient reviews tell you the style of different doctors, especially in the written comments. 
  • The most widespread written comments are: RateMDs.com, AngiesList.com and Vitals.com
  • There are fewer written comments at Wellness.com, Yelp.com and eHealthScores.com. EHealthScores shows amount of experience for each doctor, but their data are old, and you cannot search by amount of experience. As of January 2017, they still use 2012 Medicare data, while 2014 data are available on the Specialists tab.
  • There are votes, but few or no written comments at HealthGrades, LifeScript and UCompareHealth. 
  • There are some comments at Yahoo and Google, but patients' friends see those postings, so most patients do not want to discuss their medical situation frankly there.
  • Checkbook has votes (often 10-70 per doctor) for many doctors in 11 metro areas (listed below), on communications, advice, accessibility, courtesy, etc. No written comments.
Most of the sites above allow one review or vote per email address, so the ballot box can be stuffed.
  1. AngiesList gives more weight to reviews by paid subscribers, so stuffing would be expensive or impossible. AngiesList offers a national subscription which lets patients check doctors far and near. However doctors are told the real name of each reviewer on AngiesList, so there are few negative reviews.
  2. Checkbook's ballot box is even harder to stuff. They send questionnaires to:
  • subscribers of Consumer Reports and Consumer Checkbook, in 7 metro areas: Primary care doctors in: Boston, Chicago, Delaware Valley, Puget Sound, San Francisco Bay, Twin Cities, DC. $34 for 2 years of results.
  • people insured by Aetna, Blue Cross/Blue Shield of Kansas City, BlueCross BlueShield of Tennessee, CIGNA HealthCare, and UnitedHealthcare, in 4 metro areas: Primary care doctors in Denver and Kansas City; Memphis also has cardiologists and obstetricians / gynecologists; New York has all these and gastroenterologists and orthopedists. Free results.

Some doctors and hospitals "aggressively combat negative social media posts, casting a pall over one of the few ways prospective patients can get unvarnished opinions of doctors... consumers need to know there can be consequences if they post factually incorrect information." Some doctors have required patients to sign contracts which prohibit negative reviews or let doctors remove negative reviews. The "Consumer Review Fairness Act of 2016" makes those clauses unenforceable. 3,000 doctors had these contracts available in 2011, though not all used them. These doctor-patient contracts are not mentioned by any of the review sites as a reason for removing reviews, but one assumes they do it, or doctors would not bother with the contracts. 

Before patients choose any doctor based on positive reviews, it is important to ask the doctor's office: Do patients have to sign a contract controlling patient reviews?

Rules about the reviews they keep are important. Below are rules at the 3 biggest sites:

DENTISTS
Dentists are reviewed at several sites.
  • Yelp.com has many dentists, many written reviews. They list ads for other dentists first. When you get to ratings, default "Yelp sort" may help dentists who pay for ads You can sort by date or rating instead.
  • Google has many dentists, many reviews. Patients generally give true names, so few negative reviews.
  • Zocdoc.com has few dentists, many reviews on those few
  • Dentistry.com has few dentists, many reviews on those few, but many patients put "1" for good, others put "5" for good. Same company as 1800dentist (below)
  • HealthGrades.com has few numeric ratings and no written reviews
  • Caredash.com collects ratings from other sites. No written reviews
  • RankMyDentist.com has few if any reviews
  • 1800dentist.com/about-us doesn't let you search. They work to expand dentists' practices.
  • RateMyDentist.org is British

RATEMDS 

Allowable reviews: They have few restrictions: "post only truthful, non-libelous, and relevant ratings and posts."

Removing reviews: "We remove ratings for a number of reasons, but it is usually due to one of our automated spam filters thinking there were multiple ratings coming from the same rater... We generally do not remove ratings. This site is for people to report on their experiences...
  • [If doctor says:] "I have no choice but to sue you!
  •  [Website answers:] "Think twice. The Communications Decency Act (the "CDA") is a complete bar to our liability for the statements of others on this website...
  • [If doctor says:]"I'm going to sue you anyway. Taking down the review is cheaper than paying a lawyer.
  •  [Website answers:] "Sounds like a Strategic Lawsuit Against Public Participation (SLAPP.) Twenty-eight states, including our home state, have passed strict anti-SLAPP laws, authorizing expedited motions to dismiss and giving rise to counterclaims seeking attorneys’ fees and liquidated damages. If you want to drag us into court, bring your checkbook with you, because you'll be paying our attorneys to defend us."

Are reviews anonymous? Possibly. They keep patients' names anonymous unless subpoenaed, but they let advertisers and social media companies track which pages you see, so those companies can see your IP address when you post reviews. You can be anonymous if you post your reviews from someone else's computer, like a library, and don't identify yourself on that computer (eg. logging in to Facebook or email). Using your computer at a coffee shop gets you a new IP address, but your computer probably has persistent identifiers which their advertisers can track.

Are searches anonymous? Only if you use someone else's computer. Their advertisers track IP address and every page visited, so they can see what you're searching for. To foil advertisers you can turn off cookies, but not necessarily beacons. Buttons for Facebook, Twitter, and Google+ on every page presumably report every page visit to those companies.

Multiple ratings and updates: They limit patients to one rating "for the same doctor from the same computer or user." "If you were logged into your account when you submitted the rating, you can edit your star rating in your profile. Comments are not editable, but you can leave a new comment... If you were not logged in when you submitted the rating, the only thing you can do is to try to remove it and then enter a new rating." 

Can patients report why they didn't go to a doctor? Yes.

Terms of Use: 100 words; nice and short, and they don't require patients to pay for RateMDs legal costs or accept arbitration. 

Privacy policy is also short, at 400 words.


ANGIESLIST

Allowable reviews: They have woolly restrictions: "accurate, truthful and complete in all respects" (10) and not offensive, harmful or distasteful, among many other criteria (16). 

Removing reviews: They pose the question and answer it several different ways: "Angie's List may modify, adapt, or reject Your reviews if they do not conform with Angie's List's publication criteria, which may change from time to time at Angie's List's sole discretion" (10g). "we never remove reviews unless the member who posted the feedback contacts us to delete it." "If ever we question the legitimacy of a review, we take it down."

Are reviews anonymous? No. They reveal the author of each review to the doctor (10f), though not to other members. Writing any review waives privacy and lets doctors publicly post "Your private or confidential health information in response to Content You submit" (15). "Angie's List may in our sole discretion share your User Generated Content with others."

Are searches anonymous? No. They disclose personal information when "permitted by relevant law," and they have four tracking companies on their search pages (see a table at the bottom of this page), so those companies know what you're searching for. They allow themselves to "link the information we record using tracking technologies to Personal Information we collect."

Multiple ratings and updates: "You have the right to share your honest opinions at any time." 

Can patients report why they didn't go to a doctor? Yes. Reviews by people who checked out a doctor but did not go there are posted, but not weighted as heavily as people who did choose the doctor. So good or bad experiences before getting care can be read, though the doctor's average rating is not much affected.

Terms of use: 8,000 words. They do not require arbitration. They do require patients to pay AngiesList legal costs: "indemnify, defend and hold harmless Angie's List... from and against all losses, liabilities, expenses, damages, claims, demands and costs, including reasonable attorneys' fees and court costs due to or arising from: 
  •  "(a) any violation of this Agreement by You;
  •  "(b) the inaccurate or untruthful Content... or
  •  "(c) any intentional or willful violation of any rights of another or harm You may have caused to another." (27). 
Even though you pay the costs, "Angie's List will have sole control of the defense of any such damage or claim" (27). 

Privacy policy has 3,000 words.


VITALS 

Allowable reviews: must be "true and accurate" and not offensive, harmful or "otherwise objectionable," and not "deemed confidential by any contract or policy," among many other criteria.

Removing reviews: They say they provide "The complete list of all reviews from patients just like you." However they'd suppress reviews that violate their lengthy criteria, so it is not really "all." They sell to doctors a service called: "Reputation Management." It "enables providers to append responses to specific reviews [and] Opportunities to encourage patients to write additional reviews." Vitals' CEO is quoted in Buzzfeed saying the site can remove an "outlier" negative review at the doctor's request.

Are reviews anonymous? Maybe. "Except as described in MDx’s Privacy Policy (the “Privacy Policy”), MDx will not be required to treat any of Your Submissions as confidential..." The Privacy Policy does not say that it protects your IP address. They let advertisers and social media companies track which pages you see, so those companies can see when you post reviews. You can be anonymous if you post your reviews from someone else's computer, like a library, and don't identify yourself on that computer (eg. logging in to Facebook or email). Using your computer at a coffee shop gets you a new IP address, but your computer probably has persistent identifiers which their advertisers can track.

Are searches anonymous?: No. The Privacy Policy does not say that it protects your IP address at all. For your name and email it is reasonably strict, though it allows "Developing new Products and Services, which... may be supported by third-party advertising... companies and networks may place or recognize a unique 'cookie' on your browser or within the code of the mobile application or use a 'web beacon.' " Buttons for Facebook, Twitter, Google+, Pinterest and LinkedIn on every page presumably report your page visits to those companies, so they can see what you're searching for. 

Multiple ratings and updates: "post only one (1) Submissions regarding the same Healthcare Provider, entity, procedure or subjectduring any thirty (30) day period."

Can patients report why they didn't go to a doctor? No. "By clicking Submit, I...  verify that I have received treatment from this doctor."

Terms of use: 6,000 words. They require patients to pay Vitals' legal costs and accept binding arbitration in Lyndhurst, New Jersey, "You... agree to defend (at MDx’s option and at Your sole expense), indemnify and hold MDx harmless from any damages, losses, costs, or expenses, including reasonable attorneys’ fees, which MDx may incur as a result of Your Submissions... Any controversy or dispute between You and MDx... shall be submitted to final and binding arbitration as the sole and exclusive remedy." 

Privacy policy has 3,000 words.

E. PATTERNS OF COMPLAINTS BY PATIENTS

Consumer sites carry complaints about doctors, justified or not. Also, some doctors are formally charged by authorities or investigative reporters, correctly or not. The complaints on consumer sites often give early warnings about doctors who are later investigated. Second opinions are almost always a good idea, and especially in any of these situations where others have reported concerns.

DOCTORS CHARGED BY INVESTIGATORS: What Their Reviews Look Like

The first list below summarizes consumer reviews for 8 doctors who have faced charges (and citations for the charges). All the doctors denied the charges. The second list shows there have been fewer complaints for a control list of doctors who have not been charged, and who do many knee replacements, a risky procedure. So consumer complaints do show a difference between the two groups of doctors.
  1. LA Times Jan.2012. License now revoked so consumer reviews no longer available
  2. LA Times Jan.2012. Complaints about poor work, starting in 2009; many other patients praise him
  3. NY Times Aug.2012. Complaints about poor or unnecessary work, starting in 2009; several other patients praise him
  4.  NY Times Aug.2012. Complaints about poor or unnecessary work, starting in 2009, along with other good reviews
  5.  NY Times Aug.2012. Two good reviews and no bad ones.
  6.  Washington Post Oct.2013. Many good reviews, and 1 complaint in April 2010 about lack of care in a hospital.
  7.  Medicare May 2013. Many good reviews, but also a complaint from June 2012 about poor communication with the patient's primary care doctor and poor service when the patient did not change his insurance as requested by the surgeon. The surgeon was charged with billing Medicare for work not done, so even if true, the alleged activity would not create consumer complaints about poor or unnecessary work.
  8.  Justice Department Jan.2015. Complaints about unnecessary tests, starting in 2008. Many other patients praise him. RateMDs rates him lowest among 26 cardiologists in his city.
The common date of 2008-9 for the earliest criticisms above may reflect sites' retention policies and Vitals' launch in 2008 (though they imported earlier reviews from Yahoo).

DOCTORS WHO DO KNEE REPLACEMENTS: What Their Reviews Look Like

The following shows the range of consumer reviews for 5 surgeons who do high volumes of knee replacements. These have not been the subject of investigations and may be considered "normal" high-volume doctors:
  1.  Several good reviews; one complaint about delays getting a cortisone shot
  2.  Two of 12 written reviews on Vitals and one of 20 on AngiesList describe failed surgeries; the others describe successful outcomes or consultations
  3.  Several complaints about long waits for appointments, but no complaints about outcomes and much praise for results
  4.  One complaint about the brevity of an appointment and the doctor's approach, so the patient went elsewhere; but no complaints about his work, and much praise for it.
  5.  14 of the 31 reviews complain about rudeness or long waits in the office to see assistants, and about little contact with the doctor, even in the hospital. Some of the positive reviews also say contact is generally with assistants; several express happiness with his surgery.
As noted above, there are fewer consumer complaints for these knee surgeons, even though they do hard and risky work, and most apply to just one surgeon. Patients can decide whether having this variety of feedback before they go to a doctor is worth the effort of reading and perhaps counting the reviews. The doctor or friend who suggested going has not necessarily done this detailed review, so it is up to each patient.

F. NO PRIVACY ON THE WEB: TRACKING YOUR SEARCH FOR DOCTORS
Click to enlarge table

Table shows number of ad companies tracking each medical site


G. Hospitals' Quality - Click here

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