Fascinating Living in These Times
Jul. 22nd, 2009 07:27 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
hkellickThere was an article yesterday in the Post of some interest to me. Apparently, some local doctors are trying to get new patients to sign a .. basically a gag agreement saying that they will not post reviews of that doctor on a web site.
It's fascinating living in these times, when individual citizens like you and I can hold the big companies accountable for their actions by the simplest sort of reporting, a youtube video, a song written, a review or two.
A couple weeks ago, Adam Savage (of the mythbusters) tweeted about how AT&T had royally screwed him and was charging him something like millions of dollars for using their internet service in Canada. His fans retweeted it over and over and over until it made #1 on the Trending Topics. Suddenly AT&T was apologizing to Adam and the thing was.. worked out.
In another incident a little more local, a metro driver was caught texting while supposedly "driving' a metro car, and in a related incident, a metro bus driver was caught READING while driving her bus. Both employees have been disciplined.
it's all very David and Goliath, and honestly it tickles me pink to see because we have the capacity to hold business accountable, if only a little bit, by publicly embarassing them.
Not to say you should believe every review you read. I'd take things with a grain of salt, but for example if there's four reviews of a certain doctor and three of them said "I waited an hour and a half until the doctor could see me".. well.. then I wouldn't likely go see that doctor.
Welcome to the 21st century, service providers of the world. We're wired and we're watching, and, yes, Kissing and Telling. Deal with it.
It's fascinating living in these times, when individual citizens like you and I can hold the big companies accountable for their actions by the simplest sort of reporting, a youtube video, a song written, a review or two.
A couple weeks ago, Adam Savage (of the mythbusters) tweeted about how AT&T had royally screwed him and was charging him something like millions of dollars for using their internet service in Canada. His fans retweeted it over and over and over until it made #1 on the Trending Topics. Suddenly AT&T was apologizing to Adam and the thing was.. worked out.
In another incident a little more local, a metro driver was caught texting while supposedly "driving' a metro car, and in a related incident, a metro bus driver was caught READING while driving her bus. Both employees have been disciplined.
it's all very David and Goliath, and honestly it tickles me pink to see because we have the capacity to hold business accountable, if only a little bit, by publicly embarassing them.
Not to say you should believe every review you read. I'd take things with a grain of salt, but for example if there's four reviews of a certain doctor and three of them said "I waited an hour and a half until the doctor could see me".. well.. then I wouldn't likely go see that doctor.
Welcome to the 21st century, service providers of the world. We're wired and we're watching, and, yes, Kissing and Telling. Deal with it.
(no subject)
Date: 2009-07-22 06:54 pm (UTC)The problem with reviewing a doctor compared to say reviewing AT&T's billing practices is that AT&T is in the business of pleasing customers and doctors (despite what many people will tell you) are in the business of treating illness not customer service. Doctors provide a service, but their patient's happiness is not necessarily a priority.
This is not to say that by treating someone's illness you aren't going to please them, but there are many ways a doctor could do right by her patient and still leave the patient unhappy. Or more importantly, they could claim that a doctor's competence is poor because they do not give in to the patient's demands.
A few examples:
a patient sees a drug advertised on tv and comes in requesting it, it's not appropriate for the patient so the doctor doesn't prescribe it. This makes the patient unhappy and can cause them to label the doctor as a bad doctor.
a patient comes in convinced that they need antibiotics for their cold/ear infection; the physician will not provide it because its not medically indicated and leads to antiboitic resistant organisms
Even reviews based on length of waiting can be skewed. A doctor can't control when: a parent makes an appointment for one child and then brings in two to be seen, a routine follow-up appointment becomes more complex when they have three new problems to be solved, their clinic hours follow time in the OR/L&D where things can run hours late through no fault of their own.