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I am blown away by what people will post on the Internet. Sure, the company should have at least made it more clear that these reviews were being posted public

by 300bps 13y ago

I am blown away by what people will post on the Internet. Sure, the company should have at least made it more clear that these reviews were being posted publicly. At best they probably shouldn't have asked for anything other than a star-rating for the doctor. But the fact that someone would write "burning exists not only to me but to my lover as his penis contacts my vagina" at all on the Internet in any capacity is just amazing to me.

pavel_lishin 13y ago
The internet is just another medium of communication. If my doctor insinuated that I could contact her privately and securely via e-mail, I would be willing to do that - sure beats taking the 45 minutes to get to her office, then waiting another 30 minutes to see her. Now, it would take a lot to convince you and me that it would be private and secure - but we read HN, we're presumably devs. This is probably someone who is not particularly tech-savvy, and missed the warning signs, and just trusted WhateverFusion to deliver the message in a confidential manner.
- jtheory 13y ago
  This is one of the primary features of the company I'm with now, Patients Know Best. (Online communication with your doctor -- though not via email, because that cannot be secured properly). We're not free to hospitals/doctors, which means we don't have a business model pushing us to pull tricks like this. We encrypt each patient's record separately, and would not be able to make any of this patient/professional communication public even if we wanted to. If the patient makes a mistake, they risk sending a message to the wrong one of their own doctors... but there's no chance of public exposure. It's disheartening (but I'm afraid not very surprising) to see this kind of casual but disastrous breach of privacy -- this is the Facebook model of privacy handling, with vaguely positive goals papering over decisions that are unexpected and can be disastrous for some of the users. The painful difference here is that Facebook made its worst missteps around handling mostly trivial communications between college kids. It's always been obvious on Facebook that some things are seen by lots of people, and it's not always clear who sees what. Compare that with Practice Fusion, who builds a website that medical institutions give to their patients -- many of whom will not be web-savvy teenagers by a long shot -- as a way to communicate with them (one would assume, privately). THEN they have one particular place on that website that seems to be for sending feedback to the doctor, where (if you don't read the tiny italicized print) you will unexpectedly be providing content for a completely public database of reviews. Even if it had a large-print warning, most patients will not know this website is not paid for by their doctor; they will probably assume it was created by the practice itself, and they would assume its motivation for existing was to help them communicate with their doctor... so why even bother to read the fine print?
clarkevans 13y ago
The feedback request, which headlines: "How was your visit?" and asks "please leave a review for your provider" is in a branded environment from a service that schedules every interaction from your doctor. It's pretty clear patients thought this was the Physician asking for a private review /w comments. Lots of doctors these days use at-home surveys, medical assessment forms, and other "internet" data entry vehicles -- that it's done over the internet is exactly what makes the service valuable.
pessimizer 13y ago
Someone was talking about an actual medical problem to someone thought to be employed by the medical doctor who had treated it. I don't share your amazement.
auctiontheory 13y ago
Communicating with doctors via email is fairly standard. And it involves typing into an internet-connected browser - typically through a proprietary mail interface, not gmail. To the non-Hacker News reader, what these patients were asked to do by the startup must have looked very much like the communication they were already accustomed to having with their physician. (The alternative is to go into the doctor's office for a fee of $40-250 every time you have the simplest question.)

by 300bps 13y ago

pavel_lishin 13y ago

The internet is just another medium of communication. If my doctor insinuated that I could contact her privately and securely via e-mail, I would be willing to do that - sure beats taking the 45 minutes to get to her office, then waiting another 30 minutes to see her. Now, it would take a lot to convince you and me that it would be private and secure - but we read HN, we're presumably devs. This is probably someone who is not particularly tech-savvy, and missed the warning signs, and just trusted WhateverFusion to deliver the message in a confidential manner.

jtheory 13y ago
This is one of the primary features of the company I'm with now, Patients Know Best. (Online communication with your doctor -- though not via email, because that cannot be secured properly). We're not free to hospitals/doctors, which means we don't have a business model pushing us to pull tricks like this. We encrypt each patient's record separately, and would not be able to make any of this patient/professional communication public even if we wanted to. If the patient makes a mistake, they risk sending a message to the wrong one of their own doctors... but there's no chance of public exposure. It's disheartening (but I'm afraid not very surprising) to see this kind of casual but disastrous breach of privacy -- this is the Facebook model of privacy handling, with vaguely positive goals papering over decisions that are unexpected and can be disastrous for some of the users. The painful difference here is that Facebook made its worst missteps around handling mostly trivial communications between college kids. It's always been obvious on Facebook that some things are seen by lots of people, and it's not always clear who sees what. Compare that with Practice Fusion, who builds a website that medical institutions give to their patients -- many of whom will not be web-savvy teenagers by a long shot -- as a way to communicate with them (one would assume, privately). THEN they have one particular place on that website that seems to be for sending feedback to the doctor, where (if you don't read the tiny italicized print) you will unexpectedly be providing content for a completely public database of reviews. Even if it had a large-print warning, most patients will not know this website is not paid for by their doctor; they will probably assume it was created by the practice itself, and they would assume its motivation for existing was to help them communicate with their doctor... so why even bother to read the fine print?

clarkevans 13y ago

The feedback request, which headlines: "How was your visit?" and asks "please leave a review for your provider" is in a branded environment from a service that schedules every interaction from your doctor. It's pretty clear patients thought this was the Physician asking for a private review /w comments. Lots of doctors these days use at-home surveys, medical assessment forms, and other "internet" data entry vehicles -- that it's done over the internet is exactly what makes the service valuable.

pessimizer 13y ago

Someone was talking about an actual medical problem to someone thought to be employed by the medical doctor who had treated it. I don't share your amazement.

auctiontheory 13y ago

Communicating with doctors via email is fairly standard. And it involves typing into an internet-connected browser - typically through a proprietary mail interface, not gmail. To the non-Hacker News reader, what these patients were asked to do by the startup must have looked very much like the communication they were already accustomed to having with their physician. (The alternative is to go into the doctor's office for a fee of $40-250 every time you have the simplest question.)