How to handle a defamatory online review of your medical practice
August 13, 2015- By Steven E. Greer, MD
I still have active medical licenses, but only treat friends and family. I have no office and no “practice” to speak of. Therefore, I found it quite odd that the online doctor-shopping site called Vitals.com had a rating for me based on three reviews.
My rating was the worst possible, at one star, and one of the comments said, “He is an egomaniac, I swear he has done cocaine before.”.
Since I have no practice, these were obviously bogus reviews, and I knew right away what this was about. I run a powerful local New York news site that has successfully cleaned house and run many crooks out of town. In vain attempts, my opponents attempt to cyber-smear me from time to time.
So, I contacted Vitals.com (Which was hard to do because they do not list email contact. Use this support@vitals.com) and filed an email complaint. In my case, the cocaine comment was the basis for a slam-dunk defamation lawsuit, so they did remove that within minutes. However, I still had a defamatorily low star-rating.
I insisted that my entire profile be removed, and the human which I had been emailing then sent an anonymous form reply, “Vitals.com lists all actively licensed doctors in the United States. The information that we compile is a matter of public record on both a state and national level. The collection and distribution of this data does not require the permission or participation of the listed party. We are unable to preferentially remove or suppress entries on request and physicians may not decline listing with our service.”.
Then, they sent me to their lawyer, Eric Gross eric.gross@vitals.com. I explained that their company is negligent since they clearly allow comments to be posted without any human vetting them. The next morning, he emailed me stating that my entire profile had been removed.
If you run into this type of online defamation by companies like Vitals.com, try the approach that I used, above. If that does not work, a lawyer who has been successful at handling these matters for doctors is Colin Zick of the firm Foley Hoag in Boston CJZ@foleyhoag.com.
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August 13, 2015 10:53 am No Comments
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