RateMDs.com

RateMDs.com is a free website allowing users to submit and read reviews of doctors, dentists, psychologists, urgent care centers, group practices, and hospitals. The site is free to use for both consumers and doctors.

RateMDs.com
Founded2004
Founder(s)John Swapceinski
IndustryDoctor ratings and reviews
ServicesHealthcare provider and medical facility search service
ParentVerticalScope Inc.
URLhttp://www.ratemds.com

The site was originally launched in 2004, and has undergone a number of changes in recent years with a huge update in August 2014.[1]

History

RateMDs.com was founded in 2004 by John Swapceinski in San Jose, California.[2] The site has been featured in numerous publications, including The Wall Street Journal[3] and BuzzFeed.[4]

Business model

The site generates revenues through two means:

  • Ad sales to physicians, health care facilities and insurance companies.
  • Paid plans. For example: Any doctor may pay a fee of between US$119 and US$179 per month (between US$1,428 and US$2,148 per year) for the website's "Promoted Plan". This plan includes a variety of features, including the "Ratings Manager" which affords doctors the option to hide multiple negative reviews.

Ratings Manager

The site's Ratings Manager is one of the features available only to doctors who pay a monthly fee. As marketing firm Mudbug Media puts it: "Physicians who have a paid plan are ... allowed to hide up to 3 RateMDs reviews 'deemed to be suspicious' and can select a featured rating to show up at the top of the reviews."[5]

Controversies

RateMDs allows users to rate doctors anonymously. This can result in ratings which appear to the doctor to be unfair or inaccurate [6]

Possible ways in which doctors can respond to unfair or inaccurate ratings include:

  • Requesting that the rating be removed (usually met with a refusal)
  • Responding online to the rating under their own name
  • Paying RateMDs to remove the rating (as above)
  • Paying a reputation management company to improve their profile
  • Responding to the rating or adding positive reviews to their profile using a free tool like Tor Browser which circumvents the RateMDs restriction on multiple ratings from the same IP address

Corporate structure

VerticalScope Inc. is the parent company of RateMDs. Torstar Corp, publisher of the Toronto Star, purchased a 56 per cent ownership in VerticalScope in 2015. The Toronto Star has pursued an aggressive anti-doctor editorial policy for several years.[7]

Physical location

Rate MDs provides a confusing variety of possible physical locations. The Contact link on its website leads to an online form but no physical address. Its FAQs page gives an address for service of legal process with an agent Incorp Services in Westlake Village, California, but there is no evidence that the company physically conducts business in California. The incorporation documents filed in California give an address for a registered office in Troy, Michigan but this may just be a mailing address. A Cayman Islands address also appears on the incorporation documents but this appears to be a vacation property. The website is registered with an agent Domains by Proxy based in Scottsdale, Arizona but this is just a provider of web hosting services.

The corporate filing dated 30 August 2018 lists three company officers, Rob Laidlaw, Diane Yu and Vincenzo Bellissimo, all of whom appear to be based at 111 Peter Street Suite 901, Toronto, Ontario, Canada M5V 2H1. This is the same address as the parent company VerticalScope Inc, and some 2km away from the Toronto Star office at 1 Yonge Street, Toronto, Ontario, Canada M5E 1E6. It is likely that the actual business of the company is conducted from one or both of these offices.[8]

The latest corporate filing on 27 August 2019 lists the same three company officers but with a different address for Rob Laidlaw, now said to be at 94 Solaris Avenue, Suite 10301 Unit C, Camana Bay, KY1-1105, Cayman Islands. This appears to be the address of Lionfish Capital, Mr Laidlaw’s family investment firm.

References
  1. "RateMDs.com". RateMDs. RateMDs.com. Retrieved 26 November 2014.
  2. "RateMDs.com Receives One-Millionth Doctor Review". greenatom. PRNewswire. Retrieved 26 November 2014.
  3. Reddy, Sumathi. "Doctors Check Online Ratings From Patients and Make Change". WSJ.com. The Wall Street Journal. Retrieved 26 November 2014.
  4. Rossen, Jake. "Insult And Injury: How Doctors Are Losing The War Against Trolls". www.buzzfeed.com. Buzzfeed. Retrieved 26 November 2014.
  5. "RateMDs.com for Physicians". P3 Inbound. Mudbug Media, Inc. 21 January 2016. Retrieved 24 June 2016.
  6. "Who's rating doctors on RateMDs? The invisible hand of 'reputation management'". CBC News. 27 October 2018.
  7. "Medical disorder – Star investigations". Toronto Star.
  8. "California business search - RateMDs". State of California.
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