Medical malpractice issues involve court cases, but there are other potential problems that relate to medmal and can sometimes hurt your practice or make it more likely that you will be sued.

In fact, this threat is so persuasive that businesses have been formed to offer customers protection from it. I’m referring to being badmouthed on the internet. Kevin, M.D. links a story and points out that, “This is strongly applicable for physicians as well, who might have to weather online attacks from disgruntled patients.”

The story is about how people can protect their good names.

She sued for defamation and won an $11.3 million verdict, but the attacks only got worse. In December, Scheff turned to ReputationDefender, a year-old firm that promised to help her cleanse her virtual reputation. She no longer dreads a Google search on her name. Most of the links on the all-important first page are to her own Web site and a half-dozen others created by ReputationDefender to promote her work on teen pregnancy and teen depression.

“They created Sue-Scheff.net,” she said. “They created SueScheff.net. They created SueScheff.org. . . . They created my MySpace account, for God’s sake. I didn’t know how to do any of this stuff.”

You can read the whole story at MSNBC.com, “Calling in pros to refine your Google image: Search engine has given rise to the online identity management industry.”

The fact is plenty of attorneys turn away potential clients. It isn’t unrealistic to think that some of these will turn to blogs and bulletin boards for “justice.” And these, in turn, could produce negative reinforcement, when someone googles a doctor’s name.