Private health insurer NIB has created a website which rates and ranks healthcare providers, and it has sparked some outrage from medical professionals.

The online ratings site ‘Whitecoat’  allows consumers to find and compare specialists in almost all fields, but only customers of NIB can contribute to the rankings.

The ratings will reportedly be monitored by the NIB to protect specialists, the insurer says.

The site has only just been launched, but already several sectors of the industry have raised concerns.

The Australian Dental Association says its members should not to sign on to the site, with vice president Carmelo Bonanno claiming the system fails to represent the total experience of visiting ancillary healthcare providers.

“I see this as a cheap marketing exercise and nothing more,” Mr Bonanno said

“It's really a brief summary. It really doesn't afford the opportunity to really understand what happened, what the dynamic was, what the treatment was, the sort of difficulties that may have been encountered.”

“There is really no way of controlling the source of the comments and the veracity and the integrity of the comments... they say they can, but we don't believe that they can.” he continued.

The Australian Medical Association (AMA) was opposed to a similar ratings site put up by NIB in 2011, and is against the new version too.

AMA President Steve Hambleton says; “online ratings sites can often slip into berating sites.”

“You can make 10 people happy, and one of them might send you a thank you. But you can make one unhappy, and they might tell ten people.”

But the Consumers Health Forum of Australia says it is an appropriate step into the future.

“This sort of thing should have happened a long time ago, particularly with the ease of modern information technology,” spokesperson Mark Metherell said.

“But it has been very hard to bring providers in the health sphere up to the same level of transparency on fees that we expect in every other occupation group.”