In recent years, "online medical chaos" has become an important issue in social governance. Compared to the violent physical conflicts in the offline medical field, "online medical disputes" have stronger concealment and blurred boundaries, and are continuously impacting the order of the medical industry.

Based on this, the National Health Commission and 14 other departments recently issued a notice on the key points of correcting unhealthy practices in the field of pharmaceutical purchase and sales and medical services in 2026, emphasizing the need to investigate and deal with cases such as "online medical disputes" in accordance with the law. "Online medical disputes" are gradually being included in the systematic governance plan for the medical field.

The so-called "online medical trouble" does not refer to ordinary medical complaints or emotional catharsis. It is usually defined as the behavior of using the Internet platform to seek illegitimate interests by fabricating and disseminating false information, inciting public opinion, malicious attacks and other illegal means, without legal procedures to safeguard rights, and by means of network coercion. This behavior often exhibits characteristics of organization, sustainability, and cross platform diffusion, and even employs cyber armies for concentrated attacks, causing profound and difficult to quantify damage to medical institutions and personnel.

Currently, some doctor-patient disputes have exposed obvious characteristics of "online medical disputes" in the process of online fermentation. For example, in the last year's incident where a female doctor named Shao fell from a building in Zhoukou, Henan, the families of three medical disputes engaged in online violence against Shao for more than seven months. In extreme helplessness, the victims ultimately chose to end their lives in extreme ways. Another typical case is that Ai Fen, the director of the emergency department of Wuhan Central Hospital, continuously posted comments on social media targeting the attending physician and multiple hospitals under Aier Eye Hospital due to dissatisfaction with the results of her eye surgery. The court found that her multiple online statements were untrue in the relevant judgments, and thus repeatedly lost the lawsuit. After its Internet account was banned by the whole network, it still registered more than 20 accounts, and continued to target Aer ophthalmologists, unrelated employees and even the person in charge of the enterprise, which could not but arouse the attention of the relevant departments.

In addition, there have also been online accounts that have intervened in medical disputes in different places as "rights protection volunteers", publishing unverified internal chat records and so-called "medical secrets", creating public opinion hotspots to pressure hospitals, in order to seek personal self media traffic or economic benefits. These behaviors have mostly been found to constitute reputation infringement or illegal business in subsequent legal proceedings.

It can be seen that under the diverse demands of doctors and patients and the support of social media, "online medical disputes" are no longer isolated cases, and even show a trend of frequent occurrence. However, the Internet is not an illegal place, and medical rights protection is not incitement and performance. The "grievances" in medical disputes must not become a "passport" for online violence, and the means of safeguarding rights must be limited within the legal red line.

However, in practice, there are only a few "online medical rackets" that can lead to the judicial track. It is not easy to solve this problem, because many "online medical rackets" often wear the cloak of "rights protection" and "supervision by public opinion". In the current Internet public opinion field, expression is justice, flow is power, and the irrational characteristics of online public opinion itself lead to the fact that whoever speaks first and who is more provocative will easily occupy the moral highland.

In addition, the boundaries of such disputes are extremely vague. What is factual questioning? What is malicious slander? What is reasonable emotional release? What is organized attack? These gray areas in the middle have given some people the opportunity to use rules to stir up public opinion. At the same time, due to the natural information asymmetry between doctors and patients, the public often unconsciously falls into the stereotype of "strong institutions oppressing weak patients", making it easier for medical troublemakers to gain sympathy and support from public opinion, thereby exacerbating the game mentality of exchanging volume for benefits.

In fact, China's laws and regulations have woven a tight protective net against online infringement. The Civil Code of the People's Republic of China clearly stipulates that the rights to reputation, portrait, and privacy shall not be infringed upon. Internet users who use the internet to infringe upon the civil rights and interests of others shall bear tort liability. At the level of criminal law, crimes such as defamation, infringement of citizens' personal information, and provocation also provide criminal punishment space for serious cases of "online medical harassment".

In relevant cases, the judgments of courts in various regions provide a yardstick for clarifying "legitimate supervision" and "online infringement". Especially for public figures or internet celebrities, when exercising freedom of speech, they have a higher duty of careful review than ordinary people. Under the guise of public interest or justice, we cannot tolerate unlimited degradation of others' character and trampling on their reputation.

Of course, this does not mean labeling any critical voices as "online medical troublemakers". In practice, it is necessary to strictly distinguish the boundary between "online medical chaos" and neutral criticism and public opinion supervision. If a patient's complaint is based on objective facts, even if the words are sharp, it is still a bitter remedy for promoting medical improvement and falls within the scope of freedom of speech protected by law. In media reports, as long as the stance is objective and the facts are accurate, media supervision should not be labeled as malicious. Only those acts of fabricating facts, malicious attacks, and extortion should be considered targets of attack.

Ultimately, the resolution of medical disputes should return to the track of law and rationality. It is not a volume competition of "whoever has the loudest voice is right", nor is it a traffic game of "whoever has more fans is just". The clear statements of 14 ministries and commissions, as well as the rulings on related medical disputes, have clearly sounded the alarm: treating diseases and saving lives, and the medical industry is of great importance. Once online rights protection crosses legal boundaries, even if it has many "fans" to support it, it will ultimately not escape legal sanctions.