By Catherine Hughes
Negative online reviews have made headlines in the past few weeks with patients suing doctors and doctors suing Google. It’s a hot topic among dentists who feel they have little recourse when an unflattering review is posted on sites like Yelp or DoctorBase.
The Wealthy Dentist conducted a survey asking dentists if they have experienced a negative online review.66% of the dentist respondents answered yes to receiving a negative review with half of those experiencing a bad review more than once. 34% said they have not yet received a negative online review.
Here’s what dentists had to say about negative online reviews –
“It has become extortion to defend your reputation on line. It is too easy for your competitors to place negative postings about you.” (California dentist)
“I think this can be very detrimental to a practice.” (North Carolina dentist)
“They should not be anonymous. It wouldn’t take much for me to post negative reviews of my colleagues either representing myself as a patient, and I don’t know whether or not they have done such a thing. A completely anonymous person could completely irreparably ruin someones career with a negative post quite easily. People are extremely upset, impatient and oftentimes unrealistic these days so it could be very easy to unintentionally “tick someone off” while attempting to do the best for them. I anesthetized a gentleman yesterday who was in a great deal of pain so he could hear and understand that I could not extract his badly impacted wisdom tooth. After carefully explaining it to him after he visibly felt better, he asked “can’t you just yank it out?” This happens quite often, so if someone is going to post something negative they should put on their big boy pants and own up to it. Apparently I have someone floating around out there faceless that I will never be able to engage in any kind of problem solving.” (Florida dentist)
“I simply do not see how first amendment rights trump was is obviously extortion via slander. That is why we have small claims courts. If someone wants their money back for what was perceived as poor service, utilize the justice system. These online review websites allow the individual to be judge, jury, and executioner without fear of rebuke. Why someone would want to intentionally harm a doctor and “put them out of business” is beyond me. You think it is funny or unfortunate until it happens to you. I never in a million years would have thought being moral, ethical and always doing the right thing would bring me 2 negative reviews: one of them for telling the patient the truth and returning her money. There needs to be legislation against this. We need to act as a profession before the profession is completely destroyed.”(Suburban orthodontist)
“They are nothing more then gossips, and should be treated a such. The loyal patients, the ‘Last of the Mohicans,’ would never compromise the good name of their doctor.” (Illinois dentist)
“It’s BS because you can’t argue your case without revealing confidential patient information.” (Georgia dentist)
“YELP seems to play favorites with businesses. They called me to see if I wanted to advertise. After saying no, 10 of the 12 reviews were hidden from the public. Coincidental? You decide. All 10 of these reviews were 4 and 5 stars (out of 5).” (California dentist)
“I have new patients sign a paper that they need your permission to write anything about you.” (General dentist)
“I do not like them because it is very hard to rebuke.” (Florida dentist)
“There should be some way to control this. Patients can easily post a negative review simply because you take them to collections.” (Pennsylvania dentist)
“They’re a bugger and they can’t be removed…only buried…that costs $$.” (General dentist)
“I think we should be able to see who it was who gave us the negative review and have an option to deal with the situation and have the review removed.” (Utah dentist)
“I am not too concerned by an occasional bad contact. I try to make it an opportunity to get people to call or come into the office.” (Texas dentist)
“I hate the anonymity!” (Urban orthodontist)
We also asked dentists if they answered yes to receiving a negative online review, how they handled the situation. Here’s what they said –
“I replied to it, but so far it has not be removed.” (General dentist)
“I posted a very positive response. However, I found out recently there are HIPAA issues I did not even think about in the response that I could be sued for.” (Suburban orthodontist)
“The site it appeared on allowed you to write a rebuttal. I invited people concerned by what they read to call or come by the office to discuss their concerns, meet the office team and tour the facility.” (Texas dentist)
“I added explanation to it.” (California dentist)
“I responded to patient’s review online. Patient responded and 1 star was upgraded to 3 stars. I refunded money on dissatisfied service.” (California dentist)
“I just got it. I have not yet responded. She only visited my office two times and gave me all A’s initially, but changed them 10 months later for no reason that I am aware of. Got some recommendations?” (Florida dentist)
“I didn’t know about until about 8 months later so decided to ignore it at that point.” (General dentist)
“I consulted with an attorney and wanted to claim a defamation of character lawsuit. My attorney advised me that it was not worth the effort to fight. The negative postings were on Yelp. There were two negative “Yelps” posted by two different persons, but it is fairly obvious that it is the same person posting the negative Yelp. In the end, I am doing nothing against these two negative Yelps.” (California dentist)
“I responded to the review. The person sent me an email saying a filling had fallen out — one that was done 3 months earlier at another DDS. I was out of town. Apparently this person expected me to be there for them. Not even a patient of record?“ (California dentist)
“I’ve ignored it. The review was so obviously not about me but a different dentist instead. I did write to the website requesting it be removed but did not receive a response. Instead I asked people to post favorable reviews about me to balance it out.” (New York dentist)
“We asked our best patients to go in and review us which sent that one bad review to the bottom of the list.” (Utah dentist)
“It was false and posted on Yelp. I called and requested it be removed. I even threatened legal action but to no avail.“ (General dentist)
What are your thoughts on negative online reviews? How would you handle them?
