XOOVA BLOG

The Queue

Every day, the first thing I see when I log onto the internal "Xoova Administration Site" is the doctor queue. That is, the list of physicians who have come to www.xoova.com and requested a username and password so that they can update their own profiles.

I love the queue. I love the dynamic nature of the queue, where I log off to get a coffee and log back in to see two new names. I love seeing requests from prestigious institutions and large group practices, physicians of every specialty, practice administrators...all ready to share their philosophy of care, upload forms for patients, even offer appointments.

This week our VP of Business Development John Bader is in town meeting with West Coast contacts. The relationships he's built with individual doctors, practice administrators, medical societies and associations are key to the Xoova queue's steady growth.

So now we have more than 42,000 enhanced profiles. Some are great. We'd like for all 500,000+ doctors in our database to be this great. That's why, even as we implement new features, the first thing we see when we log on is "The Queue." It helps to remind us that even as we reach more and more patients, we have to first appeal to the doctors who provide their care.

Getting in Front of the Problem

It hasn't been an easy couple of weeks for some of the top physician networking/community sites on the Internet. I'm not here to pick on them. For the sake of Health 2.0, it's in everyone's best interest that their crisis communications teams successfully face questions about doctor authentication, dealing with potential imposters, and the threat of compromised anonymity.

What I am going to address is how Xoova has, does, and always will authenticate any physician who wishes to enhance his or her own profile and offer appointments. We use humans. If you are a doctor who wants to put a profile on our site, that's great. We love you. But once we do the regular authentication on the database side, we have a personal interaction with you and your practice before you get a username and password.

There's not much else to say about this. We're making sure we're doing everything we can to ensure the accuracy of our site and the integrity of our brand. It's part of the package. It's why we don't allow for one- to five-star style ratings on our site nor are we the forum for unchecked ranting and raving. Because doctors have a brand, too.