‘Medical reviews doctored’

THE consumer watchdog is suing the maker of Australia’s biggest doctor-booking software app, accusing it of deleting negative reviews and selling the personal details of 135,000 people to insurers without properly informing them.

The lawsuit lodged against HealthEngine highlights the Australian Competition and Consumer Commission’s increasing scrutiny over the way internet businesses handle people’s personal data.

The regulator has called for an overhaul of privacy law and promised action against internet companies which use people’s private information without their knowledge.

“The alleged conduct by HealthEngine is particularly egregious because patients would have visited doctors at their time of need based on manipulated reviews that did not accurately reflect the experience of other patients,” ACCC chairman Rod Sims said in a statement yesterday.

In a court filing, the ACCC accused HealthEngine of immediately disregarding 17,000 patient reviews if a person answered “no” to a question about whether they would recommend a service.

The company also edited 3000 reviews to remove negative comments, the filing said.

For health practices that did not have an 80 per cent average approval rating from patients, the benchmark to be tagged with a recommendation star, HealthEngine published the phrase “there is currently insufficient data to calculate a patient satisfaction level”, the ACCC said.

The software maker meanwhile took payment from up to nine health insurance brokers in exchange for personal details, the ACCC said.

HealthEngine founder and CEO Marcus Tan, a general physician, said in a statement that the company had stopped or changed the services referred to in the lawsuit over a year ago.