Grades for doctors How reliable are the assessment portals for doctors?

Bad marks on rating portals such as Jameda or Sanego may have a bad after-game for doctors. This also had to experience a dentist who got from an anonymous user, among other things in the field of "treatment" the grade "Six" and thus had to fear for his reputation. The doctor doubted the actual visit of the patient and went to court. Now, the Federal Court of Justice (BGH) decided that the portals in case of dispute must prove that the graded treatment really existed.
Every second person gets informed through medical evaluation portals
When looking for a doctor, for many, the Internet is the top address. Already every second Internet user got informed on medical evaluation portals in 2013, according to the result of a representative survey commissioned by the digital association Bitcom. This corresponds to the equivalent of 28 million people, with women (56 percent) using the offers much more than men (44 percent). "The need for reliable information about doctors, hospitals or treatment methods is huge," said Bitkom expert Dr. Pablo Mentzinis in a message. While patients used to get tips from acquaintances in the past, today they can receive them comprehensively and easily online, Mentzinis continues.

Help rating portals in the choice of the doctor? Image: stokkete - fotolia

But do the reviews of other patients really help, if you want to find a good doctor quickly in case of illness? That's not easy to answer. It is clear that the portals are controversial, because they have to answer again and again for negative comments legally, these are deleted from time to time as a precaution. This, in turn, causes displeasure on the part of users and gives many critical users the impression that doctors could influence the outcome of their reviews by fake praise words. "There are questionable offers that doctors sell so-called reputational care," explains Corinna Schaefer from the Medical Center for Quality in Medicine (ÄZQ) in Berlin to "Zeit Online".

Patient rates dentist several times as "insufficient"
Likewise, in the protection of anonymity, of course, there is the possibility of harming a doctor by fictitious criticism massive. A dentist was also outraged by the contribution made by an anonymous user to the medical rating portal Jameda. "I can not recommend [name of the plaintiff]," the patient wrote, according to a statement from the Federal Supreme Court, apparently aware of the potential consequences of a negative comment: "Unfortunately, it's easy to write a positive review, but a negative one is legal - difficult, which is why I refer to the grading for the evaluation, which I have carefully considered, "the user is further quoted. Subsequently, in the areas of "treatment", "education" and "relationship of trust", the patient distributed the grade "6", resulting in a total censorship of 4.8 for the physician.

However, the dentist doubted that the author was actually a patient in his practice and urged jameda.de to delete the bad review. The portal initially followed suit, but reintroduced the article with reference to an "interim review". Thereupon, the physician went to court and sued for omission. At the beginning of March, the Federal Court of Justice (BGH) in Karlsruhe ruled that the operators of an online rating portal had to deal with a complaint in detail. Accordingly, in the case of dispute, the evaluator should be asked to give an accurate statement and to send any evidence (ref .: VI ZR 34/15), according to a further communication from the Federal Court of Justice. (No)