Healthgrades

I'm a physician and almost all my Healthgrades reviews are negative, and some of the seem to be written by the same person. All are anonymous. Question for Healthgrades, how can my Healthgrades reviews be so poor, but my institutions internal Press Ganey are mostly 5 star? Something is fishy.

Reviews from top-rated MD posted on page of diff MD from another city. There are two MDs with the same name who both appear to be orthopedic surgeons. They practice in two distant states (the one with the 5-star reviews is in Illinois and the one with no reviews of his own is in Pennsylvania). They appear to be both named Venkat **. Whether the problem was caused by the unrated doctor submitting the good doctor's reviews as his own, or a disastrously flawed Healthgrades website system is unknown, but even if the unrated doctor entered the false info himself, a functional system should have flagged it and taked action when all the reviews for a Pittsburgh practitioner came from Floss, IL. I don't suggest anyone trust info from Healthgrades. I am reporting this to the newspaper "USA Today" in hopes that they will expose the shabby practices of this rating group.

I am a physician who has been in practice for 20 years. I recently reviewed my ratings and reviews on Healthgrades, which allows anyone who claims to be a patient leave a review for me despite me never agreeing to be part of this site. There were personally disparaging and very similar comments left by, supposedly, independent reviewers. Half of the reviews left in the previous 6 months indicate in the review that the author is not actually the patient (one is a parent, one a husband of a patient, and one the daughter of the patient). I challenged the three reviews that were meant to be personally insulting; one was removed by Healthgrades.

Doctors just pay this site to write what they want and delete what they want. Very dangerous to people putting their life in someone’s hands. I was very manipulated thinking I was in good hands and my health was completely destroyed. These sites should be exposed for what they truly are.

I tried three times to submit a request to Healthgrades through their "Contact Us" online form that a patient review be removed from my profile not because it is critical but because it is inappropriate and inaccurate. It was not written by my (adult) patient but by his mother to whom he had not given consent to release his medical information or participate in his treatment; her statements about the costs of my services are untrue; and she made baseless defamatory accusations that I harmed her son and am dangerous. I have received no response from Healthgrades. It does not serve the public interest to have invalid reviews on a physician review site, nor does it protect the personal integrity and business reputations of competent physicians who have been unfairly victimized.

I submitted reviews of physicians that I had excellent experiences during visits, and doctors who are medical bullies. Healthgrades only displays the good reviews of doctors, and the only negative reviews were about support staff experiences. Very misleading.

An oral surgeon in my community is in jail for sexually abusing numerous patients over a period of several years, including minors. His license has been revoked and he is no longer practicing. I informed the Healthgrades website of this, telling them they needed to update his page. They did nothing. It is still showing him as having no disciplinary action taken against him, ever, and it shows him still in practice. This is a huge slap in the face of the people he has abused and it misrepresents the current situation regarding this oral surgeon.

If you compare doctor or hospital ratings, but especially individual providers, Healthgrades always shows the lowest rating, why? They combine office staff, billing, etc in the ratings to rate the provider, even if the provider had a high individual rating. Healthgrades is VERY inaccurate and should not be used as a tool to rate a healthcare provider as an individual. Even when this was pointed out to them they referred to their policy and did not evaluate the whole picture, not a good rating website!

How can a company be allowed to exist, when it doesn't protect small businesses? Not only that, but those of us who are out there helping and are vulnerable to those with mental illness (and their misdirected anger) fall prey to drunken words and negative reviews. What about when it's not a client, but a boyfriend, or girlfriend, husband, wife, son, daughter of someone who is in therapy, and he or she doesn't want to look at the abuse inflicted...?

I cannot remove my age from my profile. Who wants to know how old their doctor is anyway? I mean come on- I am a woman and appreciate my privacy in this respect. This website is patient friendly, oh yes, a place to air grievances but in turn, I have no way of responding or addressing any slander the patient wishes to write against me. How do I give this website ZERO stars?