A competitor's review appeared the week a rival clinic opened
This account was submitted by a healthcare provider and de-identified before publication. Details that could identify a patient or practice have been removed, and it is shared with the provider’s consent.
The review went up the same week a new practice opened two blocks from mine, fixating on "outdated equipment" and "a doctor who is clearly behind on the latest guidelines," then closing by suggesting readers "check out the newer clinic nearby for better care."
It read nothing like a patient, because no patient I have ever met talks about clinical guidelines that way. I strongly suspected a competitor, but I could not prove it, and the suspicious timing and marketing style language were all I had.
It dragged my Healthgrades rating down at the exact moment I was trying to grow the practice and had taken on a small loan to do it. For weeks I found myself refreshing the page trying to guess who had written it, which is not a productive way to run a clinic or to sleep.
When I reported it, the platform told me they could not act unless I proved the reviewer was not a patient, which is precisely the thing HIPAA forbids me from confirming or denying. I spent a weekend documenting the timing and the language, and none of it mattered to their review team, so in the end I absorbed the hit.