[unethical_ban]

That is awful, and they should be punished severely for that.

This reveals a predicament for businesses that have to protect customer privacy. If a restaurant owner thinks a customer is lying, they can call the person out on all kinds of media and say they're a liar. Alamo Drafthouse made a set of videos to play before movies making fun of a customer complaint call, telling her to eff off.

If a doctor believe a patient is lying or doing a detriment to their business, they can't call them back out on social media. Their only remediation, if they think the statements are false, is a lawsuit to have the force of law take lies down.

[dm319]

This is why, at least in the UK, there are several pathways to resolve disputes - both in the hospital trust and above it, which is in part to avoid this kind of scenario. If that doesn't resolve it the patient usually approaches a lawyer to seek compensation, and most times this is settled out of court and in private. When patients and family hit social media, the hospital/doctors are not able to publicly talk about the grievances, or can only put out a very limited public statement with permission (like the recent Alfie case).

I had a friend of mine who refused a request by a patient out of the country, while on-call one weekend. I'll leave out the details apart from it involved shipping a large quantity of a very expensive medication to another country - as the hospital did not have this medication available. He had already sent enough of this medication to cover for at least a week (at huge cost to the NHS, as the medication had to be couriered by plane) when a second request was received 2 days later. A huge internet hate-mob appeared on Facebook saying all sorts of things about this doctor by name, to which he had no ability to respond.

I'm for making healthcare more transparent, but I wonder if, as a doctor, we'd be pressurised into pleasing the patient more than treating the patients correctly, with the threat of negative yelp reviews, though that's obviously a risk with any sort of profession and review system.

[SOLAR_FIELDS]

Not to discount your point, because it's mostly relevant, but in the Alamo Drafthouse case I don't ever think they reveal the name of the girl who makes the call.

Though I guess if a phone call had protected HIPAA information and you could tell who it was through their voice it might be a violation?