The tradition of doctors monitoring their own conduct through state medical boards and peer organizations is failing, Swapceinski says. "There is a lot of protection for doctors," he says. "Even with the state medical boards there is recognition that doctors policing doctors is not the best way to handle things. Most complaints about doctors are never made public."
Chen says she did her homework -- checking the doctor's credentials and history of malpractice lawsuits and studying his website -- before the surgery last year to shorten her nose. "It was minor," she says, ruefully, of her dissatisfaction with her long nose. "I actually shouldn't have done anything, but I wanted to be perfect."
She found no red flags in the surgeon's background. The results of the operation, however, horrified her. After removing the bandage on her face, she says, "I started crying. I didn't recognize myself . . . . I spent the next nine months at home. I was embarrassed to go out. I quit my job and dropped out of school."
Chen says her nose was crooked and much too short, and that she was left with breathing problems and nose bleeds. She filed a complaint with the Medical Board of California, a process she later abandoned, and consulted a lawyer who discouraged her from filing a lawsuit because of the up-front costs involved. At the time, she was also facing the cost of surgery to correct her nose. Ultimately, Chen says, she felt exposing the doctor on the Internet was her only recourse.
Later, pleased with her revision surgery, Chen also used a ratings website to write favorably about the doctor who performed it. "I wanted people to know about my experience with him because he didn't really have any feedback on the site," she says.
Some state medical boards provide consumers with limited information on doctors, such as any disciplinary actions recorded and whether their licenses are current. Moreover, state governments, insurance companies and private organizations have attempted in recent years to gather data on physician performance that can be compiled into "report cards" to help consumers choose doctors wisely. Such measures have been shown to improve healthcare quality, according to the Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality. But those tools are in their early stages and are rarely consumer-friendly or easy to locate.
