Online Grades For Doctors Get An Incomplete
http://www.npr.org/blogs/health/2013/01/04/168626218/grades-for-doctors-get-an-incomplete
Some fifteen months ago, I sat down with a developer friend of mine (ruby on rails and python) and discussed about making an online review system for hospitals in Kathmandu. This would include – hospital management, doctor review, ICU availability, ambulance and emergency care facility information, and few other medical jargon.
We’d even created a wireframe for the website. I was learning some basic coding, and reading a number of papers for it. Yelp, and Foursquare (the old one, with only check-ins) were two website we were going to imitate and translate for medicine/health related work. I was hoping for maps based location aware system that, In long term, would also tell a need of emergency blood donation to anyone nearby. A pop message would go to anyone nearby the health facility (who were registered with the system), and then data records kept of those that donated for the next three months, until s/he would become eligible again.
We had a mixed feeling on rating and reviewing doctors. At first I was very much for it, then I realized that a patient care should be more holistic, and leaving it to one mind is not something that usually happens to an admitted patient. I am still not decisive that a doctor as an individual should be rated, or reviewed, but what I would like to review/rate is a team, an institute.
I don’t think, Yelp (or any other similar site) review individual cook of a restaurant, or the waiter, or even the parking lot. I haven’t used it (no Yelp in Nepal) but It probably should be a group work, a team effort. And there are very we independent practitioners in Kathmandu. Even if they do have a single room office, it’s always besides a pharmaceutical that has a partnership to sell his/her prescriptions – making it a team work.
Due to economic downturn, and no bootstrap to fund us, we shelved the plan. He is now outside Nepal, pursuing is further study, and me, am in Nepal – learning to blog, I guess. 🙂
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