Yes it’s time once again to review this topic once more to talk about flawed data the the little value these sites have to offer. 
I have said a couple times the rating are nuts as UCLA and Boston Hospitals never seem to make the top of their listings. It’s using some type of quantitative formula for these crunched numbers and we keep getting more and more of these popping up. I have also said well just keep like a Yellow
Page listing and darn they can’t get that right either. So here’s the latest I found and this was national news and in the last few days this doctor has been in the news with a warrant out for his arrest relative to returning goods from his bankruptcy case. You can go to the links on both Vitals and Healthgrades sites and the doctor’s site has been down for a while. I like this one though, this nice little text to voice from Vitals… Watch it now as it may not be here for long… 
I have had about 3 emails this week with different ratings including HealthGrades and you know a few months ago there was this article stating they are seeing fewer reviews. I can see why. 
If the accuracy is failing, people won’t use it. You can buy insurance off the Vitals site and it says he’s accepting new patients. A lot of this comes from the data selling epidemic that strangles the US and stifles job growth as companies and banks just sell data instead of doing much in the tangible areas for revenue growth.
Physician Rating Sites Are Seeing Fewer Reviews These Days–Flawed Data Catching Up Along With Loss of Value As Consumers and Doctors Lose Interest?
Healthgrades has put the doctor on the Honor Roll and both sites still have him listed on staff at a couple hospitals. It obvious they don’t mine the news and have a small section to where they might update information like what we see on TV and on the web. I don’t know the doctor and this is just another one of my posts about the lack of accuracy of these sites and to again talk about the flawed data that is growing on the web.
This doctor here made big national news and how many doctors hide from authorities living on a glacier? Nope, nothing was updated.
Nose Doctor on the Run Found Living in a Tent at the End of a Glacier in Italy, Admitted Fraud Still Listed on Some MD Referral Sites
I looked way back in my posts and found a 2009 blog post about the doctor with Larry King. So this the latest and looks like around 5 years since any updates were done on both sites. A couple years back some doctors and myself did some comparisons and we
found all kinds of mistakes, dead doctors, listed at hospitals they had never set foot in and so forth. Right now with insurers cutting doctors pay and many trying to keep a practice open it’s totally bogus that these sites that make money selling data and get advertising revenue want the doctors to update them. There’s other services that doctors pay for like ZocDoc, totally different as you can make appointments and it’s a service the doctor wants so they do update their profile there, so don’t confuse the two.
In the middle of last year we had this news about HealthGrades joining the board of a company that does market research…huh? Maybe not on doctors and hospitals, right?
HealthGrades CEO Founder Joins WorldOne Board–Flawed Data And Broken Algorithms On the Move to Advise Market Research? Algo Duping Society?
Anybody heard of Dr. Gary Michelson who won a couple billion from Medtronic years ago and retired and listed on Forbes who does a lot of neat philanthropy work for dogs and humans…well he’s on there too…lawsuit I think was won about 8 years ago. Just doing this post and accessing the websites they are probably catching my IP and scraping data right now.
Their algorithms are not working very well and I can’t blame the hospitals and doctors for being outraged. You see this same technique has run over to consumers with the data sellers wanting all of us to fix on our own dime too and we about the same. They make their money with the data when sold so where’s the incentive to fix it? Can someone tell me.
Here’s where the AMA and I had a nice chat about all of this and it’s a blame shifting situation to where these sites rely on the state doctor boards to update, but enough said if they can’t catch stuff that makes national news. I found my own doctor who had been deceased for 8 years still showing up and not much other than graphics seems to have changed. Seriously go to the government’s page for better accuracy, they may not have as much information but what is there is much more accurate.
HealthGrades to Merge with CPM Marketing–Will Their Data and Questionable Algorithms Will Be Improved For Consumers?
Come on when you are talking UCLA and Harvard on the hospital side where you might only find one or two hospitals in the country doing specific procedures and treatments get a high school “C”…please…
Again I bring this out from time to time to make all aware of how flawed data is becoming a big issue on the web and the selling and marketing of data sellers is adding to it as nobody checks and fixes. The data is purchased and queries with gosh only knows what other kind of data out there and gee you have some new analytics for sale and lot of it will be of no use.
Half of Analytics Investments By Companies and Banks Will Be a Waste–What Do We Analyze with Big Data and Does It Have Value–Some Algo Fairies Would Do Better at Disneyland…
The time has come to license and tax data sellers as we could fund the NIH, FDA and more and also have a look federal site to where those who are licensed and sell data list what kind of data they sell and to who. This has become an epidemic in the US
and it hurts consumers every day and it’s growing, just like these doctor and hospital listings, same thing. Watch the videos on the left side of this blog for some real enlightenment or visit the Algo Duping Page to view and there’s a couple more on there as well. I put the 60 Minutes Report on how flawed they found all the credit agencies to be and it’s a mess.
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