That contradicts a quote in the article. I'm not convinced that giving individual details of a patient's case is helping the medical professional win converts. If I saw a medical professional doing that, I'd be wary of using their services. It would be an indication of how little they cared about your personal information. The author then goes on to describe a review system taken on voluntarily by a hospital to help improve their own services. However, in that, the doctors' competencies were not rated and doctors were not allowed to respond. “If you whitewash comments, if you only put those that are highly positive, the public is very savvy and will consider that to be only advertising,” said Thomas Miller, chief medical officer for the University of Utah Hospitals and Clinics. Unlike Yelp, the University of Utah does not allow comments about a doctor’s medical competency and it does not allow physicians to respond to comments. After I read the article, I was curious about the backdrop for this issue. I didn't find much, but I did find this article by the same author written roughly a year ago for NPR. In it, he writes that medical professionals have tried to sue patients who give bad reviews, but the courts have ruled in the favor of the patients and rating review companies every time so far. The author of both those articles doesn't explain his relationship with the controversy. I'd be interested to hear more about what his potential financial interest in the issue. there doesn't seem to be any way for physicians to defend themselves from negative reviews without violating HIPAA.
“There’s certainly ways to respond to reviews that don’t implicate HIPAA,” Schur said.
In 2012, University of Utah Health Care in Salt Lake City was the first hospital system in the country to post patient reviews and comments online. The system, which had to overcome doctors’ resistance to being rated, found positive comments far outnumbered negative ones.
Periodically doctors, dentists and other providers threaten or even file lawsuits against people who post negative reviews on Yelp or against Yelp itself. Their track record is poor: Courts have ruled in favor of the company and various consumers.
It seems like he's primarily interested as a journalist. His wikipedia page states that he's VP of the Association of Health Care Journalists, but that group seems pretty ethically sound. The author of both those articles doesn't explain his relationship with the controversy. I'd be interested to hear more about what his potential financial interest in the issue.