Posted November 20, 2012 in Blog, Uncategorized
“When men speak ill of thee, live so as nobody may believe them.” Plato
Hello Dr. Persky.
You did a fantastic job on my injectables last week. I posted a positive review on Yelp but they filtered it!! I read what you wrote about how they would put more positive reviews “up front” if you would pay for advertising. Isn’t that blackmail? Makes me very angry especially after reading all the positive filtered reviews. Very very skewed. Makes the Yelp rating look low. Anything I can do to help? I am mad now!!! An email from a recent patient
“You can please some of the people some of the time, all of the people some of the time, some of the people all of the time, but you can never please all of the people all of the time.”… you know the rest of that saying.
Recently a dissatisfied patient, let’s call her Susan A. Yelp, went directly to the review site for restaurants, retail businesses, and physicians, Yelp! to complain and rant about her dissatisfaction with her treatment at my office. For a small number of people in today’s “at your finger tip online instantaneous communication” society the unique sacred patient-physican relationship has become as trivialized as the interaction with a waiter in a restaurant or a gas station attendant. Unfortunate, but true.
Sites such as Yelp! allow for unilateral, anonymous complaints that are filtered and selected by Yelp! I am committed to excellent patient care and wish to hear from my patients who have any concerns or questions. I make every effort to follow up on all of our patients, and hope that communication is a two way street. I attempt to tell each patient as they are leaving our office that they should feel free to contact me with any questions or concerns, and that I will get back to them in a timely fashion. Please know that I sincerely wish to give my patients the best possible care, and that communication is essential.
Despite dedicating my career to delivering the best aesthetic care to my patients while taking care of tens of thousands of patients, there is an occasional patient who may not be satisfied with our treatment. The great thing about today’s online culture is that we can communicate instantaneously from anywhere at anytime. Conversly, a bad aspect of our online culture is that the Susan A. Yelp’s of the world can instantly and unilaterally violate patient-physician confidentiality in attempts to smear the reputation of outstanding physicians.
The patient-physician interaction requires honest communication. I attempt to discuss all aspects of care with my patients, and am available to answer questions or concerns through direct conversation in the office, over the telephone, or by email. Communication is essential in the care of patients.
I became aware of a dissatisfied patient only when notified by an e-mail from Medical Justice that “there may be a negative review about you online”, clicking on the link, which led me to Yelp! and Susan A. Yelp’s scathing review. “Susan” had a minor laser treatment months earlier. She was clearly told that multiple treatments would be necessary for optimal results with the laser, and that once her skin had healed she should contact our office for re-evaluation and more treatment. Rather than contacting our office, she wrote a scathing review attacking not only my treatment, but my integrity and personality.
Another patient wrote a negative review about her rhinoplasty TEN years after her surgery, one week after suffering a miscarriage. It took some time to figure out who she was, but eventually she was found on FaceBook, where photos of her nose looked great. Another reviewer wrote that she was angry because I had treated her the day before with a laser and that her eyes were swollen shut, and that I had not informed her of possibility. Not only had we not informed her of that possible adverse reaction, we had never seen her, had not treated anyone the day in question, and she lived in Pennsylvania (we are in California).
As of this date, I have been reviewed on YELP! 38 times. Only 8 reviews appear on the YELP! first page, the other 30 reviews are in the YELP! “filtered” section. The “filtered” reveiws take a great deal of effort to get to, one must type in the random words (the captcha) to “make sure that you are not a robot”! I can’t even open the filtered reviews on my desktop PC. Of those 30 filtered reviews, 25 are five star, 4 are four star, and 1 is two star, an average rating of 4.86/5. The average rating on the unfiltered YELP! reviews is 3.00/5. When all of the reviews are averaged, the rating is 4.40/5. YELP!s representatives have assured me that for a mere $6,000 per year advertising fee (minimum), that the discrepency between what they decide to filter, and what they decide to put on their first page would “take care of itself” and that I would have more unfiltered positive reviews. (After this blog entry was published, there are now 4 more negative reviews that are not patients that I have ever seen, let alone have treated!)
When looking up a negative reviewer’s other YELP! reviews, invariably the great majority of their reviews are negative toward other businesses as well. Some people are just plain unhappy with life.
It hurts to have one’s 30 year hard earned reputation attacked anonymously, and in a one sided fashion, where the negative reviewer can say whatever they wish, be it true or false, while as physicians we are bound to patient-physician privacy regulations, HIPPA, and our own moral and ethical standards. The internet is both a blessing and a curse for physicians. I guess what I am trying to say here is that everything you see on review sites such as YELP! should be taken with a pound (not a grain) of salt! Thank you for allowing me a platform for catharsis regarding my upset feelings over the unethical practices of sites such as YELP! I will continue to “do my best” for my patients.
I am truly grateful, thankful, and appreciative of the great majority (the 99.9%) of our patients. Happy, healthy Thanksgiving, and be well!
Dr. Michael Persky and Dr. Sarmela Sunder are located in Encino, California and Beverly Hills, California (The Lasky Clinic) but service all of Los Angeles and the San Fernando Valley. Including, Beverly Hills, Hollywood, Hancock Park, Brentwood, Santa Monica, Pacific Palisades, Malibu, Sherman Oaks, Studio City, Calabasas, Woodland Hills, Tarzana, Westlake, Thousand Oaks, Agoura Hills, La Canada, Pasadena, and more. Please subscribe to our blog by clicking the link above, right. Thank you!
