Risk Tip: Yelp Yourself: Can One Bad Comment or Online Review Ruin Your Practice?

Unhappy patients rarely retract derogatory or even defamatory statements made online. Should you fight the commenters?

Fighting defamation, at least in some cases, might make the situation worse. Even if disgruntled commenters desist, the defamation is in the public domain and will circulate again and again.

Consider the following recent court case: A neurologist in Duluth, Minnesota, sued a family member of an unhappy patient for defamation because of a negative review written on a third-party website. The media picked up the story, multiplying the negative aspects of the case and presenting additional facts that were not supportive of the physician’s office staff. Ultimately, the case was dismissed by the judge, who declared that “the court does not find defamatory meaning, but rather a sometimes emotional discussion of the issues.”

If you should receive a negative or unfair comment or review online:

• Avoid responding to the post.
• Review the comment from the point of view of a patient. Can any information shared in the comment help improve the practice?
• Trust that established, potential or new patients will use their own intelligence and judgment when reading the post.

To help maintain positive relationships with your patients, consider the following ideas:

• Trust your patients and your practice. Don’t have patients sign “gag orders” preventing them from commenting about their experience. This puts a therapeutic relationship onto a potentially adversarial footing.
• Give patients a direct line to the practice through patient satisfaction surveys. Discuss the results in regular staff meetings and address any patient concerns.
• Encourage satisfied patients to post their experience as well, to help balance the reviews.

Contributed by The Doctors Company. The Doctors Company is the exclusively endorsed medical liability insurer for members of the Ohio State Medical Association (OSMA). For more information about OSMA's partnership with The Doctors Company, visit www.osma.org/tdc.

For more information on the internet, specifically as it pertains to social media, check out the OSMA’s social media toolkit at www.osma.org/socialmediapolicy.