POST-PANOPTIC SURVEILLANCE THROUGH HEALTHCARE RATING SITES

Abstract

This article examines websites where patients rate and evaluate healthcare services as mechanisms for transforming citizens into surveillers of public services in order to generate knowledge about the everyday performance of professionals and institutions. Using post-panoptic theories about the use of information and communication technologies in daily life, it questions how such sites, and the knowledge they generate, relate to existing surveillance structures. It begins with a review of current surveillance literature before turning to the empirical case of the Dutch website Zoekdokter. It situates the site in its specific national health and policy context, which enables not only an analysis of the site, but also  the existing rules, norms and structures for monitoring performance and the dynamic between multiple types of surveillance that occur simultaneously in practice. Zoekdokter.nl is one of six cases in this research project and is the only case where patients are encouraged to evaluate individual professionals identified by name and location. I analyze website texts and 15 stakeholder interviews using the post-panoptic concepts of sousveillance, coveillance and infoveillance. In the discussion, I use the case to reflect on several assumptions made in current post-panoptic theory and, more specifically, on the transferability of these ideas to specific sectors, such as healthcare.

Keywords:

• crowdsourcing
• surveillance/privacy
• Web 2.0
• patient participation
• health care

Acknowledgements

The author wishes to thank Wendy van Leeuwen and Leonie Zwolle, graduates of the Master Program on Healthcare Management (ZoMa) at the Institute of Health Policy and Management, Erasmus University Rotterdam, for their help in collecting data for this research. Research on Zoekdokter.nl was conducted with the permission of Peter Vermeiren.

Notes

In their contributions, patients may describe aspects of individual interactions with professionals. However, the sites differ in their editing policies, whereby some de-identify the physician in question prior to posting a patient's review.

The sites in the larger data set have been set-up by various actors with an interest in health care (see Adams 2010, 2011).

For a more detailed explanation of these changes in comparison to the UK, see Dixon et al. (2010).

One exception is Chavannes (2007).