Doctors go Social

If you ever watched Scrubs religiously, you may have come across RateYourDoc.org, a spoof site set up by the Scrubs producers. The site was set up to run alongside an episode in which the cast of Scrubs were obsessing over their ratings on said website. It was all very funny, as it seemed to be parodying sites like hot or not etc.

It seems though, that a real life version of Rate Your Doc has sprung up in the US. Doctor.com claims to be “The number 1 Doctor Resource Online”. Basically, it is a search engine that enables you to search for a doctor by state and city, medical speciality and by what insurance they accept. When you have performed your search you then get a Google Map mash up with the search results pinpointed.

Doctor.com doesn’t just let you search for your doctor though; it lets you rate your doctor! By the side of each search result is a little star rating (because the quality of service a doctor provides can always be summed up by a star rating). Other options offer you to “Save on Doclist” and one can go about updating their Doclist till their heart’s content.

According to Doctor.com “Nearly every licensed medical professional in the United States has a Doctor.com profile” which seems slightly baffling. There are apparently 1.2 million profiles in the database. Honestly, it all seems a bit Scrubs to me. But you’ve got to hand it to the chaps from Doctor.com, it is a fantastic effort at social media for the medical profession.

Reva Health is another health company that is incorporating really successful social media aspects into their website. The company provides a search engine for dental and cosmetic surgery clinics around the world which also includes a similar Rate Your Doc style reviewing system.

I really don’t see something like Doctor.com working in the UK. Mainly because our lovely state health service doesn’t really need to market themselves towards the public quite as aggressively as is needed in the US. However, it’s good to see the medical profession using Scrubs as a business model.