By MILT FREUDENHEIM

Nina Zagat, the queen of eat-and-tell restaurant guides, is invading a new and even trickier reviewing niche: doctors.

The ubiquitous Zagat guides are known for an assortment of mostly leisure-related topics including hotels, spas, golf courses, movies and nightlife. Now the editors are asking people covered by one of the country’s largest commercial insurers to post reviews of their doctors and rate them in categories like trust and communication.

As in other Zagat guides, the responses are summarized and presented as scores that, in this case, are edited by the insurance company WellPoint. They can be viewed only by WellPoint customers. The reviews are being introduced online to millions of WellPoint’s Blue Cross plan members across the country.

Ms. Zagat said in an interview that unlike the food reviewers, patients are not encouraged to be “pithy and witty” (you will not read how a doctor’s “icy hands” and “crowded waiting room” made the exam “a downer”).

Not surprisingly, many doctors, including those in California, Connecticut and North Carolina, where the Zagat-WellPoint venture was first introduced, have given the idea low marks.

“It is curious that they would go to a company that had no experience in health care to try to find out how good a doctor is,” said Dr. William Handelman, a kidney specialist in Torrington who is president of the Connecticut State Medical Society. “It certainly is very subjective.”

Dr. Angelo S. Carrabba, an obstetrician in Rocky Hill, Conn., complained that Anthem Blue Cross and Blue Shield, a WellPoint company, was “treating medical care provided by dedicated and caring physicians as if we were preparing a meal.”

Dr. Ronald C. Thurston, a psychiatrist in Ventura, Calif., questioned the validity of the Zagat feature, which is also offered by WellPoint’s Blue Cross of California unit.

“Patients notoriously ignore their doctor’s advice to eat well and exercise,” he said. “Often they quit taking their pills when they’re feeling better. They usually don’t understand the technologies and skills needed for treatment.”
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Labels: Critics, Health, Industry

Viewers flooded Channel 4 with complaints after Ramsay swore 243 times in a two-hour screening of Gordon's Great British Nightmare on Friday, The Sunday Mirror reported.

His language included "187 F-words", the newspaper said.

Lib-Dem MP Don Foster told the tabloid: "This is getting beyond a joke. When you hear about this much swearing in a single programme, you're tempted to utter an expletive yourself.

"We have got to tone it down because bad language on TV is seeping into society.''

An Ofcom spokesman said the UK's communications watchdog could not immediately comment on complaints received over the weekend.

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