Although RateMDs.com is the website of an organisation based in Toronto, Canada, it also publishes ratings on NSW doctors.
When we first became aware of it 4 or 5 years ago we were quite impressed with it’s usefulness. But we soon learnt that such rating sites can be misused, and seem to be particularly misused by the very worst doctors – it almost seems at times as though the doctors who have the most 10 out of 10 ratings are are the ones to be avoided at all costs.
Of course, the same applies to Google ratings. You couldn’t get a better example of this than the fact that the Cosmetic Institute has 53 Google ratings, all five star – which many would feel couldn’t be right, although, of course, nothing can ever be proved.
But these rating sites do have one EXTREMELY important use – if you have a bad experience with a doctor your story can be up on the internet for the whole world to see, immediately. It’s an alternative, made possible by the internet, to making a complaint to the completely and utterly hopeless NSW Health Care Complaints Commission, when at least 49 out of every 50 complaints are dismissed by them, and in the rare instances where they might decide to do something, it can take 5 years or more before the complaint results in one of their media releases. In lots of situations this is the ONLY thing you can do.
Of course, doctors who get bad ratings always want to say they are not from any of their patients, but from their competitors, which may or may not be so. We as individuals have to try and make up our own minds about this.
Please note – none of us have any connection with, interest in or control over RateMDs.com. There are allegations on the internet to the contrary, but these are scurrilous rubbish.
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