[dinkumthinkum]

Reviews are for people that don't know statistics. Mostly what you get are unhelpful bimodal distributions, hardly a way to redress serious grievances. I think your discount of civil court is either naive itself or just o early cynical to the same effect.

[stuki]

Reviews weighted by trust, seem to do quite well in most places where they are employed. From Amazon and Ebay sellers to Uber drivers to College rankings. Even yelp rankings, which are extremely unspecific, seems to provide users with waay better than random ability to pick the good from the bad. Even when it comes to doctors, as a matter of fact.

I would honestly be very, very surprised if they didn't end up working substantially better for medical doctors than for most other service providers. As, at least in my experience, very few people who decide to though the effort of becoming a doctor, do so with the express intent of scamming their way to riches, the way many Ebay and Amazon sellers do.

I am sure that in some selected cases, an aggressive tort system could be construed to have provided a better outcome, but at what systemic cost? Massive over treatment of every conceivable low probability condition, to stave off grounds for lawsuits. Doctors scared of going with their hunches, and instead of doing what they feel is the best for the patient, doing what they expect will be easiest to defend if the outcome should be less than ideal.....

Doesn't forcefully injecting an expensive and completely unconcerned outside party, into an arrangement between two parties that are outcome concerned, strike you as an inefficient use of resources? Why not, instead, try to find ways to make the two concerned parties understand each other better?