RateMDs.com

The site's Ratings Manager is one of the features available only to doctors who pay a monthly fee. As marketing firm Mudbug Media puts it: "Physicians who have a paid plan are ... allowed to hide up to 3 RateMDs reviews 'deemed to be suspicious' and can select a featured rating to show up at the top of the reviews."[5]

RateMDs allows users to rate doctors anonymously. This can result in ratings which appear to the doctor to be unfair or inaccurate [6]

Possible ways in which doctors can respond to unfair or inaccurate ratings include:

• Requesting that the rating be removed (usually met with a refusal)
• Responding online to the rating under their own name
• Paying RateMDs to remove the rating (as above)
• Paying a reputation management company to improve their profile
• Responding to the rating or adding positive reviews to their profile using a free tool like Tor Browser which circumvents the RateMDs restriction on multiple ratings from the same IP address

VerticalScope Inc. is the parent company of RateMDs. Torstar Corp, publisher of the Toronto Star, purchased a 56 per cent ownership in VerticalScope in 2015. The Toronto Star has pursued an aggressive anti-doctor editorial policy for several years.[7]

Rate MDs provides a confusing variety of possible physical locations. The Contact link on its website leads to an online form but no physical address. Its FAQs page gives an address for service of legal process with an agent Incorp Services in Westlake Village, California, but there is no evidence that the company physically conducts business in California. The incorporation documents filed in California give an address for a registered office in Troy, Michigan but this may just be a mailing address. A Cayman Islands address also appears on the incorporation documents but this appears to be a vacation property. The website is registered with an agent Domains by Proxy based in Scottsdale, Arizona but this is just a provider of web hosting services.

The corporate filing dated 30 August 2018 lists three company officers, Rob Laidlaw, Diane Yu and Vincenzo Bellissimo, all of whom appear to be based at 111 Peter Street Suite 901, Toronto, Ontario, Canada M5V 2H1. This is the same address as the parent company VerticalScope Inc, and some 2km away from the Toronto Star office at 1 Yonge Street, Toronto, Ontario, Canada M5E 1E6. It is likely that the actual business of the company is conducted from one or both of these offices.[8]

The latest corporate filing on 27 August 2019 lists the same three company officers but with a different address for Rob Laidlaw, now said to be at 94 Solaris Avenue, Suite 10301 Unit C, Camana Bay, KY1-1105, Cayman Islands. This appears to be the address of Lionfish Capital, Mr Laidlaw’s family investment firm.