from Hacker News

Find doctors rated highly by peers?

by iamnnk on 8/12/24, 7:06 AM with 2 comments

Are there healthcare platforms that let doctors rate other doctors anonymously?

I find Google Reviews & Practo (in India) inadequate because they only let patients rate doctors - this gets subjective as the ratings tend to depend on how 'nice & friendly' the doctor was, or how irritable the receptionist was; rather than accuracy of the treatment protocol. With chronic conditions, the patient may end up with poor treatment from a 'popular' doctor.

I'm looking for a platform that lets patients upload their diagnostics and the prescription/case-file, and lets another doctor rate it, or just raise absolute red/green flags. The platform should anonymise both the patient & the prescribing doctor by blacking-out those portions; the reviewing doctor can easily be anonymised.

The doctors could also be geographically isolated, so there's no patient-poaching possibility.

Even if it doesn't exist today, can we debate the potential of such a platform to discover doctors & be sure of the treatment we're receiving?

  • by ano-ther on 8/12/24, 10:43 AM

    Good observation about the value of patient ratings.

    You will have to address these (this comes from a European perspective - I have no idea about the Indian healthcare system).

    1 Incentives. Usually, doctors charge for a consultation when you ask them for a second opinion.

    2 Quality: Physicians want to see as much as possible to make an informed advice. An online upload only gives them a part of that. Telemedicine may help.

    3 Liablity: connected to quality. Who is responsible for advice gone wrong?

    I’ve seen insurances offering payment for second opinions, either for easy cases that can be solved on paper (dentistry seems to be among them) or hard ones which require an additional visit (like cancer). Some of that is of course to keep their cost down. And I haven’t seen a register like you mentioned.