HealthGrades

BEWARE! I was on Healthgrades.com for the normal purposes when I was asked if I had a story to tell which would help others dealing with the same or similar malady from a list they presented. As an inveterate storyteller and helper of others, I have many, so I crafted one to fit within Healthgrades' guidelines and character count.

When I finished my story, I was required to read the small print (yeah, right) and check a box saying I did it. But, I actually read it! There's a lot about how concerned they are about patients' privacy and confidentialityuntil you read the "Submissions" section! There you are told that you should have no expectation of privacy or confidentiality AND they can do absolutely anything they want to with your submission, including the photos they encourage, or parts of your submission.

I've found other sites with the same policies deep in the fine print, and I did nothing. Now I have done this something, thereby hopefully helping others. I will continue doing this something wherever and whenever I can, to help those vulnerable people who don't read the fine print.
(I fully agree with other Healthgrades critics and counter with my own reviews against the negative ones.)

Dr. Jordan Slutsky and his team are excellent. The care that was given to my husband made us feel comfortable, confident, and secure. What an example for health professionals!
Anne & Jack Raybin

Lately, I've noticed a trend by certain medical providers to bombard me with requests for reviews on Healthgrades. Most patients want to establish a positive relationship with their doctors and will tend to provide a 5 Star review. That assumes things went well. Sometimes that sentiment is short lived when things cause you to think differently. When you attempt to remove or edit your review on this site, it's intentionally made to be very difficult.
I have dealt with doctors who start off on their best behavior. They are marketing themselves. Soon, they're pushing unnecessary, expensive tests and treatments to pump up fees. Depending on your insurance, you can be on the hook for BIG and unnecessary deductibles.
Dentists do this often. The ultimate goal is to extract a certain amount of money from your wallet because they have a revenue target. The same goes for doctors employed by facilities such as HMO's. They push unnecessary x-Rays and lab tests to increase profits. Both are part of the root cause for skyrocketing insurance, low reimbursement rates, and everyone feels the pain. The patients, who are not qualified, find themselves questioning the doctor's decisions if they think they've been victimized. This is risky and insane. Healthgrades benefits by more site visitation and higher ad revenue. It's all about money, plain and simple.
Healthgrades has been cited numerous times for encouraging doctors to get patients to fill out their surveys as a fix to smooth out complaints them. The high volume of 5 Star surveys results in real negative reviews getting buried or deleted. I say this because I have seen many instances of providers with over 100 perfect ratings despite many of them being inept and unethical. Healthgrades is deceptive. The mere fact that editing reviews is next to impossible bears that out.
Your best bet is to avoid Healthgrades and not be quick to review something as critical as medical care until you feel confident. Their ratings are flawed. As humans, we do things based on emotion and ultimately conclude that we rushed to judgment.

Used this site before I chose a surgeon for neck/back problems. The doctor I ended up choosing Heathgrades gave a clean bill for him, but in reality had 2 lawsuits that went against him and 3 pending at that time. He now has 20+ and I have a useless left arm after my surgery from the doctor I wouldn't have chosen if I would of got the correct information about him from Heathgrades. DO NOT USE HEALTHGRADES FOR CHOOSING ANYTHING! Unreliable site.

Dr. Chiu and his staff are very professional, courteous and kind. My experience with the hyperbaric oxygen chamber was a positive one.Dr. Chiu told me I would need between 10
And 20 treatments and after the 18th treatment I was discharged. People asked me how the chamber works. It is a glass capsule. You lay in it on a mattress and you can move around lying down. The technicians, who were wonderful, can talk to you through a telephone, there are speakers in the chamber. If you need a technician, you knock on the glass, and they ask what you need. There is a television above the chamber which utilizes the speaker system in the chamber. It takes about 15 to compress the chamber, during which time your ears will pop, like they do when travelling on a plane. You need to either yawn, drink water, which is provided, or hold your nose and squeeze. For the next hour and a half, you watch tv, sleep or just relax. The final fifteen minutes is when they decompress the chamber. It is a painless treatment that helps your body to heal.

HealthGrades does not protect providers from bad reviews that include false information. No recourse.

This site is unethical and misleading. There is no verification process, so it's a great way to commit character assassination; just get a bunch of friends together and write a bunch of bad reviews. I hope no one takes this site seriously. Also, it's unclear where they get their description of what services the caregiver provides. My experiences is that healthgrades.com's descriptions of the services provided do not match what services the provider actually advertises as providing on their website and in the phone book. For example, I was looking for a therapist who does EMDR for PTSD. I found a therapist on line; checked healthgrades -- services descriptions didn't match; I was wondering if their were two therapists with the same name. I called the provider and asked her about the disparity. She advised that the healthgrades description is in error. She further advised she tried to correct the erroneous information thru the healthgrades site. She reported she was able to provide updated information, but the site never changed her data nor did they respond directly to her about her update. She says she gave up and simply hopes others don't look to this site for accurate information.

COLEN KARI L.MD PLASTIC SURGERY HACKENSACK & NEW YORK OFFICES.
Thank you for your excellent work for performing surgery on me after [BREAST CANCER]. Your hands are skilled as my incisions are small and my pain has been minimal during recovery. Thank you for your excellent work and the caring way you treated me as a patient. All staff and physician I met were wonderful, professional and dedicated people.

If you look up Dr Elmon J. Oliver, an anesthesiologist in Kalamazoo, MI on healthgrades.com you will find him awarded the designation of "Healthgrades Recognized Doctor". According to their site:
Healthgrades Recognized Doctors designation identifies leading doctors who are board certified in the specialty they practice, have never had their license restricted or revoked, have no malpractice claims, and are free of state or federal disciplinary actions.
Yet a web search will reveal this:
mlive.com on April 03,2012 reported that a Kalamazoo jury awarded $1.23 million to the family of a 66-year-old Lawton woman who died of a brain injury caused by the lack of oxygen during surgery in 2008. The family of Maria Garcia filed a medical malpractice lawsuit in Kalamazoo County Circuit Court in 2010 against Dr. Elmon Oliver Jr., an anesthesiologist with Kalamazoo Anesthesiology, which was also named in the suit. Bronson Methodist Hospital was dismissed as a defendant in October 2011. The trial, which began March 21, concluded Friday with the jury finding that Oliver was "professionally negligent" and that his negligence was "a proximate cause of death" of Garcia, according to court records.

I absolutly loved this site! I needed to find a pediatrician for my daughter, and was having trouble finding a good doctor that accepted our insurance. This site lets people conduct detailed searches for healthcre in many feilds including physistions, dentist, hospitals, and nursing homes. For example, I searched peditricians in my area who accepted aour insurance. I got names, adresses and ratings. Also availible are drug reveiws either by drug name or condition. For a fee there is availible detailed cost reports on procedires, labtest and visits.( so you can have an ideal how much these may cost.) Another reason I liked this site is because people are not limited to searching for only doctors. I searched and found a wonderfull nurse pratictiner in my area. I was so please with the results of this site. Personally I beleive I will never have to look anywhere else for any questions I may have on what medical provider I should use. This site has everything I needed.

I had a year and a half struggle trying to get help with a surgeon, being refused help as an established patient having a prior successful surgery with this Doctor. I went on the Healthgrades site and gave an honest appropriate review of this surgeon, which also didn't go against community standards. I initially made a review while upset on their site that did borderline on going against community standards. It was flagged and removed. I put up a second review being extremely cautious of my wording. I even emailed Healthgrades patient email asking them to please allow this review to stand, that patients should be able to leave honest reviews about a provider. I was happy the review was posted very shortly after my email was sent. Only three days later, my post was again taken down in Healthgrades. I know in my heart it was flagged by my Doctor because I was still in communication with him at the time and I mentioned reviewing him stupidly while still upset. I wasn't sure how the Healthgrades site operated. I was upset after a horrible ordeal with my established surgeon. He abandoned me as a patient causing me much further harm. While I was still hurting and upset I emailed Healthgrades about them removing my review many times, too many actually but I was upset knowing my Doctor flagged this review and felt I had the right to speak appropriately and truthfully about my experience. I then received an email from Healthgrades scolding me and threatening I could be banned from their site for abusing the email system. To this day every single review I attempted to post has not been published. I know for a fact the Doctors all have accounts at Healthgrades they pay for and can ask for negative reviews to be taken down. This is a violation of our civil rights not allowing negative reviews to stay standing just because a provider is more worried about their online reputation than their patients health. Healthgrades does not have unbiased reviews at all and if you look at most physicians reviews they all have top ratings. The site is corrupt catering to Doctors who have paid accounts to fatten up the sites wallet. Healthgrades could care less about honest unbiased reviews of Physicians or protecting the public from bad Apple providers. Healthgrades should be shut down.