My One-Star Review

I asked the investigator to please contact the reviewer and, if in fact it was a disgruntled patient, to tell the patient I would like to meet with them at no fee, of course, so I could learn what I was doing wrong in my practice of psychiatry.  I also asked, repeatedly, for a list of procedures that are taken when a physician requests and investigation, and I was told that these, too, are “confidential.”  
     
Three days later, I called again and was told that because I was in the behavioral health field, my review would be removed in 24 to 48 hours, but that HealthGrades has nothing to do with Google and it could take 30 days before the Google search stopped announcing my professional inadequacy. An e-mail I received said the review would be removed in 14 business days, but it was, in fact, removed within a day.  
   
MacLean Guthrie, vice president of public communications/corporate communications for HealthGrades explained, “We have a policy of removing patient surveys submitted for mental health professionals because this conflicts with the ethical responsibilities and constraints for behavioral health providers and their clients. As such, we’re removing the survey submitted to your profile from our site.”  There is nothing on their website that indicates this, but I was happy to have my single star vanish, at least until it happens again.  I don’t imagine 5-star reviews prompt many complaints, so the rating of psychiatrists is oddly skewed in favor of the doctor, and perhaps this explains why I was the only 1-star psychiatrist among the list I reviewed.   
   
So HealthGrades never asked if I wanted to be listed on their website; my information appears there, much of it incorrect, without my permission or consent.  

Before I hung up from my first phone call to HealthGrades, I asked the investigator his name.

    “Mike.”

    “And your last name?”

     “We aren’t permitted to release that,” Mike told me.  Yet another ironic policy for a company that, according to its founder, Kerry Hicks,  “ is built on the principles of transparency, provider accountability, and consumer empowerment.”  I had to wonder, was Mike worried that someone might say negative things about him online?
     
—Dinah Miller

Please note that Vitals.com and RateMDs.com also provide similar venues for public comment on physician practices.  They were not the topic of this article simply because they didn’t show up on my Google search page with a one-star review.  

As of this morning, HealthGrades has also honored my request to remove my information from its site.

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DR. MILLER is the co-author of Shrink Rap: Three Psychiatrists Explain Their Work, published by Johns Hopkins University Press.