YELP is a great place to see reviews on a persons personal experience with a restaurant or another service provider that is one sided (such as a plumber or gardener). However, a patient is just as responsible for their health (if not more) than the doctor treating them and YELP should not allow a patient to review a doctor when the patient is just as responsible as the doctor is.
Because of HIPAA guidelines, the doctor cannot defend themselves with the actual facts of the case and a disgruntled patient is free to tell their side of a story (which is very often not even close to the truth).
Giving angry patient's a platform to vent behind the safety of a computer screen (and completely anonymous) is not the right way to determine a doctors success and value. It is slanderous, libelous, unfair and based on some of the reviews out there.... immoral.
Without mentioning names of some of the reviews that have been left on Dr. Biamonte's YELP page, here is the flip side to some of those stories from Dr. Biamonte.
"When yelp approached us to advertise our office on their website, my daughter Cassandra who was running the office was against it. She advised me that Yelp had very unfair policies when dealing with doctors who may receive a bad review.
Unfortunately, I did not listen to her as I was assured by the salesperson for yelp that they would present both sides fairly and that we could control what is published on our yelp page.
Within a few months after starting our yelp page we had a patient become disgruntled because we told him that fruit sugars aggravate Candida, this fellow went loony over this and blew out of our office only to give us a bad review on yelp. When I wanted to respond to him on yelp our attorney warned me that is was against HIPAA guidelines to discuss this mans case on the internet.
Then there was a family of 6 who all did my treatment only part of the way, felt much better and despite my warnings, did not complete the treatment. I warned them that they would relapse. They did not listen. They also failed to pay their $1300.00 balance. After they went ahead and relapsed they each wrote bad reviews on our yelp page claiming they were from different parts of the country.
Then we had a patient who developed leukemia and wrote a bad review because I failed to diagnosis their Leukemia. Diseases such as Leukemia are not only out of the scope of my practice but is illegal in NYS for me to diagnosis a patient with such an illness. Could I respond? Only to the degree of what the patient themselves stated.
We had a patient with allergies who after doing fine and improving on our recommendations ended up in the ER do to an allergic reaction to a medication they took. Her sister in law told me that the patient was told in the ER that it was an allergy to a brand new prescription medication. What did the person do, she blamed me, wrote a bad review, and despite her sister in law pleading with her to “do the right thing” she left the review on the yelp site and never amended it. And why? Because we charged her for a broken appointment. The horrible and damaging review is due to her having to pay for an appointment that she did not cancel.
These are the types of bad reviews a doctor can acquire from irresponsible people who have no recourse to their actions and we have no ability to show our side of the story on yelp!!"
Because of HIPAA guidelines, the doctor cannot defend themselves with the actual facts of the case and a disgruntled patient is free to tell their side of a story (which is very often not even close to the truth).
Giving angry patient's a platform to vent behind the safety of a computer screen (and completely anonymous) is not the right way to determine a doctors success and value. It is slanderous, libelous, unfair and based on some of the reviews out there.... immoral.
Without mentioning names of some of the reviews that have been left on Dr. Biamonte's YELP page, here is the flip side to some of those stories from Dr. Biamonte.
"When yelp approached us to advertise our office on their website, my daughter Cassandra who was running the office was against it. She advised me that Yelp had very unfair policies when dealing with doctors who may receive a bad review.
Unfortunately, I did not listen to her as I was assured by the salesperson for yelp that they would present both sides fairly and that we could control what is published on our yelp page.
Within a few months after starting our yelp page we had a patient become disgruntled because we told him that fruit sugars aggravate Candida, this fellow went loony over this and blew out of our office only to give us a bad review on yelp. When I wanted to respond to him on yelp our attorney warned me that is was against HIPAA guidelines to discuss this mans case on the internet.
Then there was a family of 6 who all did my treatment only part of the way, felt much better and despite my warnings, did not complete the treatment. I warned them that they would relapse. They did not listen. They also failed to pay their $1300.00 balance. After they went ahead and relapsed they each wrote bad reviews on our yelp page claiming they were from different parts of the country.
Then we had a patient who developed leukemia and wrote a bad review because I failed to diagnosis their Leukemia. Diseases such as Leukemia are not only out of the scope of my practice but is illegal in NYS for me to diagnosis a patient with such an illness. Could I respond? Only to the degree of what the patient themselves stated.
We had a patient with allergies who after doing fine and improving on our recommendations ended up in the ER do to an allergic reaction to a medication they took. Her sister in law told me that the patient was told in the ER that it was an allergy to a brand new prescription medication. What did the person do, she blamed me, wrote a bad review, and despite her sister in law pleading with her to “do the right thing” she left the review on the yelp site and never amended it. And why? Because we charged her for a broken appointment. The horrible and damaging review is due to her having to pay for an appointment that she did not cancel.
These are the types of bad reviews a doctor can acquire from irresponsible people who have no recourse to their actions and we have no ability to show our side of the story on yelp!!"
