RateMDs sued by doctor who claims the site violates privacy laws
A class action lawsuit in British Columbia in Canada has been given the greenlight by the Supreme Court of the province against RateMDs.com, a free website that allows the public to review doctors, clinicians and other healthcare professionals who provide services to patients.
The lawsuit, brought by Ramona Bleuler, MD, alleges RateMDs violated privacy and anti-harassment law by allowing ratings and detailed reviews of healthcare professionals to be posted without consent. In court filings, the plaintiff alleges the website does not verify the accuracy of reviews and has an arbitrary ranking system that unjustly harms the reputation of physicians.
Further, the ability of users to anonymously post and ‘like’ reviews makes it challenging for healthcare professionals to self-police and respond to claims made by RateMDs' users, the plaintiff alleges.
RateMDs is a “for-profit commercial enterprise” and does not allow profiles or reviews to be removed by healthcare professionals even when users make fraudulent claims, Bleuler and her attorneys claim.
In a response also included in the court filings, RateMDs said public interest overrides any concerns about privacy, adding that information posted on its site must be non-personal in nature—with the exception of contact information for healthcare professionals being posted on the site, presumably to help users select a medical professional. Anyone is also able to flag posts for review, and posts that violate RateMDs' policies are subject to removal.
However, the plaintiff argues “the reviews and rankings are unverified and may not even meet the defendants’ terms of use” and “includes paid advertising from health professionals who would otherwise be restricted from ranking themselves against other health professionals,” implying a conflict of interest in the way RateMDs manages postings.
“Until recently, health professionals could pay the defendants to have bad reviews suppressed on the website,” lawyers for Bleuler added in the court filings.
RateMDs rejects the lawsuit outright, writing that the plaintiff is “attempting to shoehorn a privacy claim to stifle warranted criticism with respect to how she practices medicine.”
In justification of moving the case forward, the court wrote that flagging reviews is “insufficient” and the central issue “is not individual reviews, but the aggregation of the reviews, the matching of the reviews to individual health professionals’ basic information and comparative rankings of the health professionals based on the reviews.”
The lawsuit was granted class action status by the court, allowing other medical professionals to join in. The plaintiff—and possibly future plaintiffs—are seeking unspecified reimbursement for damages. An ultimate ruling, if the case goes to trial, will depend on how the court interprets the expectation of privacy for plaintiffs, which will be weighed against the public interest arguments of RateMDs.
Chad is an award-winning writer and editor with over 15 years of experience working in media. He has a decade-long professional background in healthcare, working as a writer and in public relations.