Published 17 March 2009, doi:10.1136/bmj.b1102
Cite this as: BMJ 2009;338:b1102

News

UK doctors’ body criticises plans for patient feedback

¹ BMJ

The first 150 words of the full text of this article appear below.

The Medical Protection Society has criticised government plans to encourage patients to post feedback about their GP on a publicly funded health website.

NHS Choices (www.nhs.uk), a multimillion pound government website, already allows patients to rate hospitals.

Stephanie Brown, director of policy and communications at the Medical Protection Society, a non-profit making organisation that provides legal advice to healthcare professionals, said the plan to extend the NHS Choices service to primary care could lead to "extremely inappropriate" comments being posted online about individual GPs, remarks which may unfairly reflect on a doctor’s clinical competence.

"Patients base their judgments of doctor’s ability on many factors—especially, in our experience, the doctor’s interpersonal and communication skills—and these factors can be extremely misleading when it comes to judging a doctor’s clinical competence."

Dr Brown added, "There is potential for anonymous online patient feedback to be uncontrolled, leading to inappropriate and even defamatory . . . [Full text of this article]

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