Skip to main content

Some Health Providers Are Sharing Patients’ Info Online In Reaction To Bad Yelp Reviews

By

Now that we live in a world where it seems everything can be rated — from your restaurant experience to your root canal — privacy issues are popping up in unexpected places. Like in health care providers’ responses to negative reviews from patients on Yelp, for example.

ProPublica teamed up with The Washington Post and found many situations where doctors and others zapped by negative reviews have replied to those patients’ negative reviews online, and in doing so, revealed details of medical treatment.

Yelp gave ProPublic access to its public reviews, totaling more than 1.7 million, and let the group research them by keyword. ProPublica identified more than 3,500 one-star reviews in which patients mentioned privacy or HIPAA (otherwise known as The Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act of 1996 which outlines patients’ rights to privacy, among other things [PDF]).

There was a dentist’s reply to a patient who blamed him for losing a molar, which read: “Due to your clenching and grinding habit, this is not the first molar tooth you have lost due to a fractured root. This tooth is no different.”

Or a chiropractor who disagreed with a mom’s reviewing claiming that he’d misdiagnosed her daughter with scoliosis: “You brought your daughter in for the exam in early March 2014,” he wrote. “The exam identified one or more of the signs I mentioned above for scoliosis. I absolutely recommended an x-ray to determine if this condition existed; this x-ray was at no additional cost to you.”

Affected patients say they suffer doubly in theses cases: first there’s the poor service or care, and then the pain that comes with the disclosure of information they thought was private. Sometimes, the shock of having such details revealed works, and patients back off.

“I posted a negative review” on Yelp, a client of a California dentist wrote in 2013. “After that, she posted a response with details that included my personal dental information. … I removed my review to protect my medical privacy.”

The patient took their story to the Office for Civil Rights within the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, which enforces HIPAA, ProPublica reports, and the office warned the dentist about posting personal info in Yelp reviews. It’s also currently investigating a New York dentist for disclosing personal info about a patient who complained about her care.

Health professionals responding online to reviews are allowed to speak generally about how they treat patients, but must get permission to discuss individual cases, HHS says. Rating your health provider doesn’t give them the right to rate you in return, basically.

“If the complaint is about poor patient care, they can come back and say, ‘I provide all of my patients with good patient care’ and ‘I’ve been reviewed in other contexts and have good reviews,’ ” Deven McGraw, the office’s deputy director of health information privacy told ProPublica. But they can’t “take those accusations on individually by the patient.”

For the most part, however, reviews of doctors and dentists stick to a few common themes that aren’t about health care delivered, but rather things like the office wait, the front desk staff, billing procedures, or bedside manner, according to Yelp’s senior director of litigation, Aaron Schur.

Many providers are appropriate in responding to online reviews, he says, while some don’t respond at all.

“There’s certainly ways to respond to reviews that don’t implicate HIPAA,” Schur told ProPublica.

For more on ProPublica’s report, check out the source link below.

Stung by Yelp Reviews, Health Providers Spill Patient Secrets [ProPublica]


by Mary Beth Quirk via Consumerist

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Chrysler Deletes Its Dating Apps, Decides To Remain Single For Now

By
They say you can’t have a healthy relationship until you’re happy with yourself. That appears to be the new mantra for Fiat Chrysler: After several attempts to woo General Motors and more recently Volkswagen , the carmaker’s top executive says he plans to ditch his lovelorn ways to concentrate on his company’s bottom line.  Bloomberg reports that CEO Sergio Marchionne has turned his focus to eliminating FCA’s debt rather than eliminating its single status. Marchionne has set a goal of erasing FCA’s debt by 2019, the same year he’s set to retire. To do that, he says the company needs to do a little work on itself. “We need to be very careful that we don’t start unrealistic dreams about consolidation as we are on our way to achieve historically important results and a debt-free position,” Marchionne told investors at the carmaker’s annual meeting in Amsterdam, as reported by Bloomberg. “We are not at a point of time to discuss any alliance.” Yes, you heard that right: The man w...
Post a Comment
Read more

Study Claims 43% Of “Wild” Salmon In Stores & Restaurants Isn’t Wild At All

By
That wild salmon entrée calling to you from the menu at dinner might not be all it’s advertised. In fact a new study released Wednesday found evidence of mislabeling in nearly half of all salmon sold in restaurants and grocery stores.  The study [ PDF ] from international environmental advocacy group, Oceana, analyzed 82 salmon samples from restaurants and grocery stores, finding that 43% of the products were mislabeled. DNA testing confirmed that 69% of the mislabeled product consisted of farmed Atlantic salmon being sold as wild-caught product. According to the report, consumers satisfying their salmon craving in restaurants are misled about 67% of the time, while those who buy their seafood in a grocery store are misled 20% of the time. “Americans might love salmon, but as our study reveals, they may be falling victim to a bait and switch,” Beth Lowell, senior campaign director at Oceana, said . “When consumers opt for wild-caught U.S. salmon, they don’t expect to get a far...
Post a Comment
Read more

Introduction to Biology (IX Biology Notes Chapter 01)

By
Science: Our universe operates under certain principles. For understanding of these principles, the experiments are done and observations are made; on the basis of which logical conclusions are drawn. Such a study is called "Science". In brief science is the knowledge based on experiments and observations. Biology: The Scientific study of living organisms is called Biology. The word biology is derived from two Greek words "bios" meaning life and "logos" meaning thought, discourse, reasoning or study. It means that all aspects of life and every type of living organism are discussed in biology. Branches of Biology: Biology is divided into following branches: Morphology The study of form and structure of living organisms is called morphology. It can be further divided into following two parts: 1. The study of external parts of living organism is called external morphology. 2. The study of internal parts of living organism is calle...
Post a Comment
Read more