GMC may use controversial online GP ratings for revalidation

21 Jul 08

And the team behind www.iwantgreatcare.org, which enables patients to rate every GP and hospital doctor in the country and leave anonymous comments, plans to sell data on to PCTs to enable them to monitor GPs’ performance.

The website, launched last week, has caused outrage among GPs and drawn a formal warning from one of the country’s top libel law firms, after including comments accusing GPs of being ‘arrogant’ and ‘obnoxious’.

Carter-Ruck solicitors, acting on behalf of a group of 37 doctors, wrote to the site’s founder, Dr Neil Bacon, a hospital doctor who previously created www.doctors.net.uk, expressing ‘grave concerns about the potential for inaccurate, irresponsible and defamatory allegations being published on the website’.

The BMA has also heavily criticised the site warning ‘there is a significant possibility of it being used in a malicious way’.

But it has emerged the site could play a role in formal GMC procedures.

Writing in the GMC’s newsletter, Dr Bacon says the site’s patient feedback facility would be ‘the easiest and quickest and cheapest way to meet one of the major new demands of revalidation’.

A GMC spokesperson said it had yet to approve individual feedback tools, but refused to rule out anonymous patient comments being used in disciplinary hearings.

‘What evidence is admissible in fitness to practise hearings is a matter for the panel and is decided on a case by case basis,’ she said, adding that it was ‘difficult to forsee the circumstances’ in which this would happen.

Professor Chris Bulstrode, a consultant orthopaedic surgeon and GMC council member, said the site would ‘put the cat among the pigeons with the medical profession, which is just what is needed.’

Dr Bacon insisted systems were in place to remove any defamatory comments and said the response to the site had been overwhelmingly positive.

‘There's a noisy minority who don't see the benefits of progress here, but a far, far larger number of doctors from all levels, primary care and secondary care, junior and senior, who are saying it’s fantastic, this will help me and it will help the patients themselves,' he said.

‘In my mailbox the number of people thinking it's a great idea outnumber those who don't by roughly seven or eight to one.’