A one-star review for a procedure my practice has never offered
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A one star review appeared claiming I had "butchered" a cosmetic procedure and "rushed her out the door in five minutes." Because Google ranks it as "most relevant," it pinned itself to the very top of my profile and stayed there for the better part of a year.
The treatment she described is a laser service my practice has never offered, and there was no patient by any matching detail in our records. The one thing that would have ended it, simply saying publicly that this person was never my patient, is exactly what HIPAA forbids me from saying, because even that denial acknowledges a patient relationship.
My new patient consultations dropped enough that my office manager noticed the pattern before I did. The strangest part was standing in an exam room reassuring an actual patient about a stranger's account of a visit that never occurred.
I reported it twice through the standard flow, and both times received the same templated reply that it did not violate their policies. I considered asking my loyal patients to post positive reviews to bury it, then felt uneasy about gaming the system just to defend myself.