Here's a hypothetical question: Suppose I examine the performance of 100 doctors and I rate ten doctors as being the very best, and ten as being the very worst. Suppose that 9 out of the ten 'best' doctors are indeed the best, but one is in fact just average - she doesn't deserve to be rated in the top 10. Similarly 9 of the ten 'worst' doctors are indeed exceptionally bad, but one is actually no worse than average.
If I were to publish my ratings, one doctor will be unfairly penalized. However, hundreds of patients will benefit by being able to switch to a better doctor. In this hypothetical situation, do the rights of one doctor outweigh the rights of so many patients?
Even as a hypothetical that's an unrealistic question. Since we have a shortage of doctors in many regions and specialties due to price controls and educational pipeline bottlenecks, even if it was possible to rate doctors with a reasonable degree of accuracy (and in reality this generally isn't possible) some patients would still end up getting stuck with the worst performers. The only difference is that instead of the selection being mostly random as it is now, under your hypothetical the patients who would switch to the best doctors would be the wealthiest and best informed; the poor, elderly, and illiterate would continue to get screwed. Is that really the outcome you want?
Now who is being unrealistic? I accept that demand for medical services is not as elastic as in other industries, but to suggest that exposing a group of poorly-performing doctors would have no effect on their patient numbers seems rather far fetched. Even if that were the case, the sudden loss of rich patients might make a few of these doctors consider early retirement.
>Since we have a shortage of doctors in many regions and specialties
We also have record levels of advertising by not only drugmakers but also doctors and hospitals. If there is a shortage of providers, why is so much being spent on demand generation efforts?
Because healthcare industry incentives are aren't aligned to optimize for Quality Adjusted Life Years per dollar. Some procedures and drugs are highly profitable because of high demand by patients with money, but those aren't necessarily the ones that society actually needs.
If I were to publish my ratings, one doctor will be unfairly penalized. However, hundreds of patients will benefit by being able to switch to a better doctor. In this hypothetical situation, do the rights of one doctor outweigh the rights of so many patients?