Periodically I have been getting e-mails from a site called Doximity, which claims to have over 50% of U.S. physicians signed up.
The e-mails I’ve gotten from this outfit all purport to involve docs who want to add me to their contact list. I am mostly unfamiliar with or have only the most tenuous connections with these people (for example, someone in my med school class who I cannot recall after more than 20 years, fellow members of the hospital staff I could go years without communicating with). One of these docs is on staff at an affiliated hospital and is severely ill, leading me to doubt that he is busy adding obscure contacts to his Doximity profile.*
It turns out that I magically have a profile on this site along with a colleague in my department (neither of us had ever visited there or signed up). I read an online review from someone who said he had unsuccessfully tried getting Doximity to remove his profile. After repeated communications went ignored, he reported switching his profile photo to that of a naked woman, after which Doximity blocking his logon (but didn’t delete the profile).
One of the supposed advantages of this website is that it claims to allow secure e-mail communications between physicians so that patients can be discussed without risking privacy law violations. At this point however I wouldn’t trust them with a ten-foot speculum.
Is this site an outlier when it comes to apparently boosting “membership” using questionable methods? (I can see advertisers being impressed by high membership percentages, at least if they’re real). Are there totally above-board professional social media sites that Dopers have found useful?
*I also wonder how many physicians who don’t know me well are getting e-mails purporting to be initiated by me wanting to add them to my “contacts list”.
