The
Dichotomy of Doctor Reviews Sites & HIPPA Patient Privacy laws:
Because
of the inherent dichotomy in the Terms and Conditions of most
websites and the HIPPA "guidelines". Most reviews sites
require a reviewer to be an existing customer; yet the Doctor is not
allowed to confirm that it's a real customer. 84% of consumers turn
to review sites to find a doctor. Fewer than one in five have a
process for dealing with bad reviews, even though more than 80% of
providers are concerned about the damage reviews can cause. Dr. Jay
Calvert, the President of the Rhinoplasty Society has a blog on the
issue pointing out "there is over 30 doctor reviews sites and
none verify the reviewers by any certainty".
Patient
data includes anything that someone can use to identify a patient,
including the individual’s bio-metrics: Name, Email address, Phone
number, Birthday, Appointment dates/times, Test results, Diagnoses,
Don’t acknowledge whether the reviewer has ever been a patient.
Focus on general office policies. Use generic language whenever
possible.
How
to avoid a Lawsuit and reduce your Insurance Rates:
That's
the hundred percent sure way to avoid a lawsuit. Every story on how a
doctor should respond to online reviews contains bad advice from
industry professionals and reputation specialists and even Yelp and
Google. The first thing you do, is the new review would have been
picked up by our VirutalU reputation monitoring software. Then, after
we research the source of the reviewer, and review the terms and
conditions of each site, all we have on file, then, and only then,
would you even consider directly responding to a reviewer with a
reply comment. The general rule in reputation management is to leave
the negative posts alone, don't create unusual activity to that
profile, and don't exacerbate the situation unless you've considered
the options; our "20 Ways to Remove a Yelp" and the various
options you have to combat each individual situation. In a recent
statistical study there is a high correlation of higher insurance
rates for doctors with poor reviews on the Internet.
In Texas, a pair of freestanding emergency rooms recently filed a legal petition seeking to force Google to share the identities behind 22 screen names connected to negative comments about the providers’ services.In another closely watched lawsuit, a plastic surgeon in Cleveland is suing a patient over negative reviews she posted on RealSelf and other sites. The dispute is unusual in that it may actually proceed to trial (most get settled), potentially leading to an influential precedent. The Journal piece highlighted a defamation suit filed by an Ohio plastic surgeon that is slated to go to trial early next year. That in itself is unusual because suits over reviews seldom reach the trial stage. Most are settled quietly before a jury is ever selected. Some experts think the Ohio suit could be a bellwether for future cases involving online medical reviews, the WSJ reported.
Unlike other professionals or service providers, who can give as good as they get in answering reviewers, medical professionals must tiptoe through a legal minefield in responding to online reviews. That required reticence is the result of the federal patient privacy law known as HIPAA. The law (officially known Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act) places strict limitations on what a doctor can and cannot write in a review section. Medical professionals are barred from so much as acknowledging a reviewer has been a patient, let alone defending treatment decisions and may result in a lawsuit.
“The HIPAA Privacy Rule gives individuals important controls over whether and how their protected health information is used and disclosed for marketing purposes,” said OCR Director Jocelyn Samuels in a statement posted on the OCR website. “With limited exceptions, the Rule requires an individual’s written authorization before a use or disclosure of his or her protected health information can be made for marketing.”
Eric Goldman, a law professor at Santa Clara University, found more than two dozen defamation lawsuits filed by doctors against patients over online reviews in a survey covering 2003 to 2015, The Wall Street Journal recently reported. Two cases went to trial, resulting in jury verdicts for the doctors, though one was reversed on appeal, Goldman found.
https://blog.yelp.com/2016/12/experts-guide-patient-privacy-online-reviews
