A Sweet Online Review

[The White Coat Investor]

Online reviews are occasionally useful, if you take them with a grain of salt. But sometimes, sometimes, they are pure entertainment. Check out this one our hospital received this week:

This hospital gave me breast cancer. This century does not know this yet but cancer is fake. Satanic corporations use hospitals and cancer screenings to give cancer. When you go in for symptoms they really give it to you. It is a massive money maker and population thinner. (They already have a cure) These evil people gave me cancer. My breasts were perfect. I had rare perfect 41 year old breasts. Now one is a c and one is a d and leaking, exuding "symptoms". These Mormons thought I was a waste of flesh with no babies. They ruined my breasts and gave me breast cancer. I was healthy before I had to come here for surgery. They held me down and did things to my body without my convent. ************************ awaits you all evil staff.

Needless to say, we only got one star.

Lest you think she just hates hospitals, here are the reviews of her dentists:

He is a liar and a bad dentist. He will tell you anything to get your money and then do as he wises. My girlfriend lost twenty thousand dollars on getting her top and bottom teeth here. He made them huge, destroying her bite, then would not fix it. I made the mistake of visiting him for teeth whitening and he insulted my looks, calling my teeth a horse, and offered me fifty dollars to leave a positive review. He is my opinion tge worst dentist on the planet.

Everyone here is very nice but Dr. ..... really hurt my smile. I came in with some crowns another dentist had made that were very round on the side and looked like those wedding mints. I asked him to shave the sides down. It was very nice of him to adjust them since it was not his work...but....he did nothing to the sides when I clearly said SIDES and made them super shorter. I could not tell this is what he was doing. So, when I said trim the sides down to make them flat, he made my back four teeth SHORTER. Significantly shorter. This was years ago. Now, I had all my teeth redone by a different dentist and my back teeth are still super short....because of the mold of my teeth....so now I have a staircase smile because this guy could not understand the difference between side and bottom. A five year old could. It has effected me forever.

And her beautician:

I have never experienced such phychos. There was a girl with long brown hair that had purple tips. She came up behind me and raked her fingernails through my hair, as if she was hitting on me. I asked her to stop and she did not. I called corporate to report her. I felt violated. In return, she looked me up by my Sally's card and sent police to my house to tell me I can no longer shop there, saying I made a scene, which was a lie. I am fine with not shopping there, but she lied. I cannot believe what a psychotic bunch of people. She had some blonde girl who was with her say it was true, according to police, who were shown no tapes by the way, yet I never saw a blonde girl there...just the gross one who would not get her hands out of my hair. These people here are psycho trash who sexually harrass.

And someone at her HOA (who reviews HOAs?):

...........is the most unprofessional child. I cannot believe she is the HOA of such a beautiful community. She is a liar and takes only the sides of people she likes. I had police stop the drug parties of a neighbor who trashed the lawn at all hours and she actually took his side. She acts like a high school girl and emails people gossip about who she likes and does not. The grounds keepers she hires do an excellent job and Candlelight homes look great with respectable upkeep, but she does nothing to help residents. She is a petty little kid and I think she does drugs. I honestly see her just as I saw teens in the 90's and I think she is a stoner. Check in to her background Candlelight homes. She was fired for extorting money in California. I will never buy a home managed by HOA solutions again. In fact, I once sent her a video of a party outside my window at four am where my neighbor was most likely smoking a joint and snorting coke, and she did not care. She plays favorites like a teenager, lies and is possibly on drugs herself.

Hmmmm....is there a pattern here?

[TheHappyPhilosopher]

Hopefully she does not find my blog...

[StarTrekDoc]

Some folk simply are haters in life -- the perpetual glass empty folk who love to call ambulance chasing lawyers.

Steer clear and keep on swimming, keep on swimming.

[Zaphod]

StarTrekDoc wrote:

Some folk simply are haters in life — the perpetual glass empty folk who love to call ambulance chasing lawyers.

Steer clear and keep on swimming, keep on swimming.

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There was a hilarious study that actually showed its true, haters gonna hate.

In an interesting related note, our practice has noticed that the more difficult, annoying and overall less happy patients can be positively predicted based on degree of RBF they have in their intake photo.

[Zaphod]

Rex wrote:

If you go to any malpractice lectures they will tell you to consider not taking patients who say bad things about other docs, report complications that they feel are from other docs, and especially if they have filled previous suits.

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Yep, I do this all the time. Surprisingly a lot of patients are waiting on "settlement" money, immediate red flag.

[Hank]

Geez, I wonder what kind of online reviews she leaves for her (much needed) psychiatrists/psychologists?

[Dr. Curious]

Online reviews are so skewed toward the extremes. When was the last time you read a detailed 3.5 star review of a routine dental cleaning?

As a rule of thumb, I try to mentally disregard the top and bottom 10% when researching something. The bottom 10% eliminates some of the crazies, and the top 10% some of the fake/planted reviews.

How do you know if a patient has previously maligned other docs or filed a lawsuit, without the patient telling you?

[pistolpete]

Hank wrote:

Geez, I wonder what kind of online reviews she leaves for her (much needed) psychiatrists/psychologists?

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Ha! It would be interesting to evaluate her. I already have some hints for what may be wrong, but of course wouldn't publicly post due to Goldwater.

[Hank]

There are databases available of patients who previously have filed suits against doctors / hospitals.  Some folks subscribe to such databases and won't take these litigants on as new patients.

While there are access to care concerns about this, I can see why this might be wise for a doctor in private practice.  You can't be denied treatment in the ER, but you sure as ************************ don't need to get that facelift or boob job under my roof if you've already sued 3 other doctors or hospitals.

P.S.  I'm intrigued by Zaphod's observed correlation between RBF and "difficult" patients.

[Donnie]

Do you think the review was completely made up, i.e. 100% troll? Otherwise I am failing to see the humor in this person's physical and mental condition. I doubt this is the only person with a view like this, so rather than laughing, perhaps some time should be spent thinking about this person's point of view. I think there can be a misalignment of incentives between medical professionals and patients, which ultimately leads to distrust between patients and medical professionals. You don't have to look much further than the mass advertising of prescription medicines to see that.

[Zaphod]

Donnie wrote:

Do you think the review was completely made up, i.e. 100% troll? Otherwise I am failing to see the humor in this person’s physical and mental condition. I doubt this is the only person with a view like this, so rather than laughing, perhaps some time should be spent thinking about this person’s point of view. I think there can be a misalignment of incentives between medical professionals and patients, which ultimately leads to distrust between patients and medical professionals. You don’t have to look much further than the mass advertising of prescription medicines to see that.

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Physicians arent drug companies and we also wish those werent happening.

A great rule to apply to anyones life is if someone is always coming up against adversity, things not going their way, everyone against them, etc....while there is a natural dispersion in other peoples results...its time to start looking at the common denominator. Like an amazon review with only 1 or 5 stars something is amiss.

This is no ones particular pt, and when you choose to put your views in public you choose to let people judge you the same as anyone on this board.

[Donnie]

Looking at only negative reviews is a classic example of confirmation bias.

The drug issue is just the most obvious example. Did millions of kids need tonsillectomies in the last century? I'm not trying to start a debate on specific procedures, but doctors aren't working for free and certain procedures will pay them better than others. I don't think it is safe to assume that the compensation a doctor will receive from a procedure is completely removed from all doctors' thinking.

[Hatton]

Donnie the woman was claiming a mammogram gave her breast cancer!  If she was saying she had to wait, or she was degraded, or that it hurt.  ok.  She could have a legitimate complaint that it failed to detect her cancer.  Mammograms don't cause cancer.  I think she missed a medication dose or two.

[Zaphod]

Donnie wrote:

Looking at only negative reviews is a classic example of confirmation bias.

The drug issue is just the most obvious example. Did millions of kids need tonsillectomies in the last century? I’m not trying to start a debate on specific procedures, but doctors aren’t working for free and certain procedures will pay them better than others. I don’t think it is safe to assume that the compensation a doctor will receive from a procedure is completely removed from all doctors’ thinking.

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What, seriously? She is obviously someone who has no issues finding faults and projecting all kinds of very negative things onto other people. It just is what it is.

I would never take a pt with that kind of attitude on, and you can be sure it comes through even in a quick discussion, they cant help but speak ill of people/businesses out of proportion to reality. Its not the negativity, its the proportionality that is the issue, and they are not connected in this person. Not having a guard up or being on alert for this type of person is very dangerous to a practice.

Everything else is a non sequitur in regards to the topic at hand and speaks only to your own biases and prejudices in general.

[Donnie]

As I mentioned at the outset, the woman has both physical and mental health problems if her post is somewhat truthful. While there is a lot of noise in her reviews, the complaints stem from distrust of doctors. In pariticular her complaints discuss the cost of medical and dental care and whether the money motivates doctors' recommendations. I don't think it is appropriate to mock such a person as a medical provider. Doing so marginalizes the person and their views. While someone may disagree with her, I think it is counterproductive to completely dismiss what folks like this have to say. The mentality of disparaging and marginalizing people who have a different view is the same one that's used in the current political environment, leading to some pretty suboptimal outcomes.

No, I don't think a doctor has a duty to take a patient on if the doctor views the person to be a trouble maker.