Medical gag orders: don't rate this M.D.

• Author: Bailey, Ronald
• Position: Citings - Brief article

WOULD YOU sign a contract at a supermarket checkout forbidding you to complain to friends and neighbors about its prices, services, or products? That's what some frustrated physicians are demanding their patients do.

Monitoring ratings and reviews on sites such as Trip-Advisor and Yelp is part of doing business for an ever-larger number of American companies. Increasingly, patients are applying the same principle to medical services, rating their doctors on websites like Angle's List and RateMDs.com. The physician group Medical Justice has responded with contracts that aim to protect doctors' reputations by gagging...