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Medical Injustice


by Mike Haverhals    |    December 2, 2011 4:39 pm PDT

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MouthTapeSilence

We’ve been pretty outspoken against patient gag-orders and assignment-of-copyright contracts that have been sold to doctors by Medical Justice.  We’ve always maintained that they are a bad idea for doctors and have also questioned the legality of these end-runs around patients’ first amendment rights.  As many of you learned earlier this week, that stance was put to the test when a doctor attempted to enforce one of these contracts on DoctorBase.  What resulted was an unfortunate fallout of Streisand-sized proportions for the doctor and, fortunately, the discontinued use of these contracts by Medical Justice.

Sadly, the doctor used the contract sold to her by Medical Justice to charge her own patient $100 a day for what she claimed was infringement of copyrighted material (the patient’s own online review) and then as the basis to threaten to sue her own patient.  In response to the doctor’s actions, the patient has now filed a class action lawsuit against the doctor.  Then, when push-came-shove, Medical Justice shoved the doctor under the bus.  They stated that they simply “provide the agreements” and that “it’s up to [their] clients how they decide to use it” – leaving the doctor high-and-dry.  But wait, it gets worse…

This week, the Center for Democracy & Technology also filed a complaint with the FTC over Medical Justice’s practice of selling these contracts to doctors.  In response to the complaint, it appears that Medical Justice has recognized that their chicanery business model is done for and has stated that they would “retire” the contracts and would be recommending that doctors no longer have patients sign these contracts going forward.  What that says to us is that they know the services they’ve sold to thousands of doctors was nothing more than a smoke screen with no legal standing.

It’s unfortunate that a doctor’s reputation was destroyed before these patient gag-orders (hopefully) have come to an end.  But, at the very least, we can use this as a lessen for your own practice – don’t sue your patients or attempt to squelch their right to free speech.  When you do this, everybody loses.  Instead, make sure your happy patients are raving about how great you are online so that you don’t have to worry about the negative effects from the occasional disgruntled patient.  Because the best defense against a negative review is to drown it out with a sea of positive reviews.

 

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  • Christopher D. Prevel, MD, FACS

    I noted that you used “scam” with a line thru it on the first posting of this blog and your revised posting of the blog uses the “chicanery” with a line thru it. Why use either adjective? I thought your company was a more professional organization. As a member of Medical Justice, I have found them to be an ethical and professional organization. I agree with your recommendation to keep your patients happy and if they are not happy then find out why and correct the problem to their satisfaction. I am not certain why you had to “throw them (Medical Justice) under the bus.”

  • Michael Edwards

    I agree wIth the last post. I have sed Medical Justice for over 3 years and have cared for many members of the legal profession who had no problems with reviewing and signing this agreement

  • Philip D. Park

    I have always tried to leave every patient satisfied with my work. If I can’t, I normally refund any money that they paid to me. While this is not for every dentist, I will do this to rid my practice of these disgruntled patients.

  • http://www.doctorbase.com Mike Haverhals

    We’re glad to hear that that there are doctors that haven’t had any fallout from these contracts and that some of you have even found Medical Justice ethical in dealings with them. We should make a point of saying that we’ve met Medical Justice employees at various conferences and we know that there are decent people in their organization.

    However, the reason for the harsh words is because of something their CEO was quoted as saying in the MSNBC article that’s linked to in our blog post. After ‘retiring’ their patient gag-order contracts on the same day the FTC complaint & class action lawsuit were filed, he stated, “We probably should have retired the agreement earlier, but today’s the day we did it.”

    This would imply to some that somebody at Medical Justice was aware of the potential issues with these contracts. But, instead of being transparent with their doctors by warning them about these concerns, it appears as though they continued to sell these contracts for a profit…until it was too late for one of their doctors. Now, there’s a dentist in New York who may never be able to practice again due to the backlash from this ordeal causing what is likely irreparable damage to her reputation. (The very thing from which the contract was supposed to protect her.)

    Strong words indeed, but hopefully they’ve served as a wake-up call to help doctors avoid the far less professional words brought upon by the public in light of trying to enforce one of these contracts: Public Fallout

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