Cheers,
Connie

While I understand that there is the ability for malicious comments, there are usually enough comments that I tend to throw away the very worst and the very best and try to get a sense of the average response.

In Alberta where the doctor you discuss lives (and where I live), there seems to be very little that you can do until a doctor very seriously and continuously screws up. Even when I have filed complaints with the health board, we got a quick polite call and that was it. Due to some unfortunate circumstances, my family has seen many doctors over the last few years and I must admit that most of the time I agree with most of the posters on RateMd.

I think that the huge support of sites like RateMd comes from the simple fact that the medical profession seems more interested in just saying "trust us, we know what is best" and generally refuses to be held accountable for their actions.

If the doctors don't like RateMD, the surest way to make it obsolete is to develop a better system that allows patients to provide feed back and perhaps even encourages doctors to try to improve their service. Until the doctors start taking more responsibility for policing their own, someone else will have to do at least some of the job for them.

They can still play a public service role to enhance service quality. The colleges in Ontario will be publishing disciplinary measures online, which may have a similar effect.

But when people who are not even patients rate these physicians out of animosity, especially where they are involved in litigation with the physician on other issues, I think we all agree that the court should be empowered to identify who they are and sanction them appropriately.