It seems like every day a new online business website pops up claiming to be a legitimate “rating site” supposedly to help people choose who is best at something. These sites act like advocates for the average person.
The online yellow pages have their “super pages” and their “super pages guarantee.” They heavily advertise and market that on TV claiming that you can find the best plumber or carpenter or doctor with the super badge! Angie’s list is another one and the list goes on and on.
AVVO seems to be another one making a splash with doctors and attorneys. I came across this AVVO site when they emailed me and asked me to claim my profile. I found out that they made up a silly rating system that gives each doctor or lawyer a number! Don’t we all wish it was THAT easy??? Well unfortunately it is not! They give a higher number to older surgeons despite the fact that there are plenty of older plastic surgeons who are responsible for botched nose job results. Think about poor Michael Jackson. His surgeon was one of the most established older surgeons in LA. In fact I believe he told us once that he was the head of the Greater LA Plastic Surgery Society. The AVVO “system” automatically generates these numbers and it actually gives a higher number based on medical school rankings. Medical school rankings are simply based on research and grants and facilities, etc.
While the average lay person may think, “gee gosh, I guess a plastic surgeon from Johns Hopkins must be so much better than a Plastic Surgeon from University of Louisville,” the facts do not support this assessment. There are plenty of lousy and plenty of great surgeons from each and every medical school. So when I sent an email to the CEO of AVVO recently pointing out these facts and pointing out that his system may be placing patients in danger by having them falsely believe and trust an invalidated, unproven, made-up rating system, he simply told me his attorney would be talking to me about this from now on! I think the responsible thing would have for him to have woken up and realized the dangers of his creation and taken off the number rating system but then again the internet is a wild jungle out there!
