Site allows you to mark hospitals

A NEW website allowing people to evaluate their experiences in French hospitals has launched.

Similar to sites like which allow you to mark hotels or restaurants, Hospitalidee lets people give a mark out of five in various categories as well as leaving a comment about their treatment and stay.

Users can sign up for a free account to leave their reviews or can browse through those that people have already made, looking for establishments by specialism, type of stay (maternity, A&E, out-patient - ambulatoire - etc) and location.

Officially opened yesterday after six weeks of tests, when it had 1,000 visits a day, with comments ranging from enthusiastic (‘exceptional care’) to disgusted (‘lamentable care for a digestive emergency’; ‘the radiologist mistook a biliary cyst for liver metastasis – a lot of medical errors in this clinic’).

Hospitals are marked in categories: staff, medical care, attentiveness, safety, clarity of tariffs, services and general ‘accompaniment’ (ie. smoothness of administrative procedures).

The site has been hailed as a useful move by the Collectif Interassociatif sur la Santé patients group, because it gives visibility to patients’ individual experiences, though with the proviso that the evaluations naturally reflect personal feelings so may not be completely objective.

Medical journalist François Malye, who helps create an annual classification of hospitals for news magazine Le Point, welcomed the site saying that, in general, “information is non-existent for patients wanting to go into hospital”.

The vice president of the national doctors’ professional body, Jacques Lucas, told journalists he thought more needed to be done to make sure the reviews are ‘reliable’, and he warned about the usefulness of ‘off-the-cuff’ remarks over the internet.

Officials at official health watchdog Haute Autorité de la Santé noted that the site did not allow for ‘systematic’ collection of all patients’ views. They said they are planning their own system of patient evaluations from next year but it will allow for collecting everyone’s opinion via questionnaires so they are not skewed towards those from the most pleased or upset.

Site founder Loïc Raynal, a former EDF worker from Toulouse, says he has banned personal, named criticism of health workers and has tried to aim for neutrality by not having advertising on the site. He plans to make money by selling analyses of data from the site to hospitals.

He is also looking at ways to avoid fake reviews in partnership with information watchdog Cnil. This may include in the future requiring people to submit a bon de sortie proving they visited the hospital or clinic they are evaluating.