Medical Justice
Medical Justice is an American company that aims to protect doctors against lawsuits and bad reviews. According to its own information, it has around 2,500 members. It became known throughout the United States for its contracts that prohibit patients from online criticism from doctors .
The company is headquartered in Greensboro , North Carolina . The founder and managing director is the doctor Jeffrey Segal.
Legal aid
Medical Justice offers various plans to its clients, whom it refers to as members, to help against malpractice litigation. It arranges lawyers, appraisers and advises doctors on their other conduct in the event that a lawsuit is imminent. It also provides doctors with standard contracts that force patients to only choose reviewers from a certain group. The service cost between $ 600 and $ 1,800 a year in 2007. It also brings counterclaims against patients if they want to legally defend themselves against malpractice.
Online reviews
Medical Justice started a program against online criticism in 2007 and has tried various methods over the years to achieve this goal. In 2009 it was a kind of confidentiality agreement . Medical Justice gives doctors a standard form for their patient contract that patients must sign before starting treatment. According to the interpretation of Medical Justice, patients transfer their copyrights to potential criticisms to the attending physician. Medical Justice then sends a DMCA takedown notice to the website provider to remove the copyright infringement criticism.
How far the system is actually used by doctors is unknown, as there is no scheduled inventory. In 2009, Medical Justice stated that approximately 1,000 doctors were plan members and that several hundred thousand patients had signed the relevant contract. Both Yelp and RateMDs.com report unsuccessful attempts to remove reviews citing medical justice contracts. It is unknown to what extent the provisions deter patients from commenting on their own.
So far, no process has been carried out based on the patient contracts. It is doubtful whether the contract between doctor and patient would stand before an American court. Wendy Weltzer of Princeton University believes it is unlikely that a full transfer of copyrights would be legal in such a case. Even if this were to be the case, the Web 2.0 pages on which the criticism was posted would probably fall under the fair use provisions of American copyright law.
The Medical Justice system is thus one of several attempts to banish bad reviews of doctors from Web 2.0. So far, these have all failed in the USA because of the laws on freedom of expression and the doctor's obligation to maintain confidentiality. The problem for the doctors is that the procedure does not prevent bad false reviews from competitors and others, since they never sign a patient contract. If you try to have them removed anyway, you face penalties under the DMCA. Legal scholars Jason Schultz and Eric Goldman created the Doctored Reviews website to educate doctors and patients about copyrights in such cases.
Remarks
- ^ Dan Frosch: Venting Online, Consumers Can Find Themselves in Court , New York Times May 31, 2010
- ↑ a b AP: Docs seek gag orders to stop patients' reviews , 2011
- ↑ Medical Justice: Service Plans ( Memento of the original from September 2, 2011 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was automatically inserted and not yet checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice.
- ^ Jacob Goldstein: Doctors to Patients: Don't Slam Us Online Without Permission Wall Street Journal Online, August 22, 2007
- ^ Rachel Emma Silverman: Doctors Take the Offensive , March 23, 2004
- ^ A b Alison Stewart: Doctor's (Gag) Orders , NPR March 24, 2009
- ↑ a b c d Timothy B. Lee: Doctors and dentists tell patients, "all your review are belong to us" , Ars Technica May 23, 2011
- ↑ a b Jonathan Bailey: Are Doctors Abusing Copyright to Stop Negative Reviews?
