Love them or hate them, online physician review sites like Healthgrades.com, and all the reviews they contain, are not likely to go away anytime soon. These sites are promoted as a way for patients to select a quality physician, based on the reviews of prior patients. If these reviews are negative, they can be extremely problematic for a practicing physician, especially since Healthgrades will normally turn up at or near the top of Google search results for searches based on a physician’s name.

There are many issues stemming from these sites that can negatively impact a physician’s practice. First, patients can respond negatively to sound medical advice. For example, a physician may suggest to a patient that losing a few pounds would be a good idea, and if the patient finds that to be offensive, he now has a public outlet where he can anonymously vent those frustrations. Another problem with Healthgrades, and other sites like it, is that there is no verification that a review is real or legitimate. Consequently, a competing physician’s office could potentially give themselves an unlimited amount of 5 star reviews, and fill your profile up with negative reviews. Fake reviews do happen on these types of sites, and the effects can be quite impactful. The final common problem that physicians have with these types of sites can stem from a legitimate, bad review. Suppose a patient had to wait an hour or more for a scheduled appointment. This is a very rare occurrence in your practice, and the bad review does not reflect the care and effort that you put into ensuring that patients aren’t left waiting on a regular basis. If 95% of your scheduled appointments take place on time, the odds are low that any of those patients feel motivated to post a positive online review based on your timeliness; conversely, if 5% of your patients are forced to wait, a large percentage of them may be motivated to leave a damaging, negative review.

So, what should you do if you find out that a Google search of your name produces results that say you are a three-star or worse physician? The first thing you do NOT want to do is sue your patient for defamation; that has already been tried, with very poor results. What you should do is take the reviews seriously, and ask yourself if there could be some validity to the complaints that you’ve seen. Perhaps you have unknowingly hired a rude receptionist, or your patients’ wait times really have been too long. Maybe a serious self-examination of yourself and your practice will reveal shortcomings of which you weren’t previously aware. If you turn this newly gained self-awareness into a plan to improve the shortcomings, then perhaps it’s not unreasonable to view the initial negative review as a long term positive.

Whether you find any validity in your Healthgrades reviews or not, a good way to deal with the rise of online physician review sites is to start requesting more reviews from your patients. Studies have found that the vast majority of online physician reviews are positive, so by simply including a written request for review, along with the stack of papers that your patients leave every exam with, you should be able to overcome a handful of negative reviews with a larger number of positive reviews that will more accurately reflect on the patient experience at your practice. Explain right on the form that positive reviews are helpful to the practice, and that negative reviews are taken seriously and will cause the practice to examine how it might provide better service. Provide instructions on your handout about how and where to complete the review. Once you’ve taken this step, spend some time checking your reviews, and if you’re still seeing less than ideal ratings and comments, make sure to address any issues and look for ways to improve.