Best Practices for Preventing Negative Online Reviews

Negative online reviews can significantly affect your practices online reputation.

6 Minute Read | Last Updated January 13th, 2025

Best Practices for Preventing Negative Online Reviews

With the right approach, you can reduce the chances of receiving negative online reviews while also encouraging more positive online reviews. The key is to focus on delivering an expectational patient experience, addressing patient concerns early, and creating a patient-first culture.

Why Preventing Negative Online Reviews Matters

Your online reviews shape how potential patients perceive your practice. Studies show that 9 out of 10 patients trust online reviews as much as personal recommendations, making it essential to avoid negative online reviews. While it’s impossible to satisfy every patient, preventing negative online reviews is an important aspect of every practice.

The Top 4 Strategies To Prevent Negative Reviews

  1. Deliver Exceptional Service: Ensure your staff is well-trained and equipped to handle patient concerns quickly and professionally. A positive patient experience is the best way to encourage 5-star reviews.
  2. Build a Patient-First Culture: Make it easy for patients to contact you directly if they have an issue. Providing accessible communication channels, such as email, phone, or live chat, gives patients a way to resolve problems without resorting to leaving a negative review.
  3. Patient Surveys: Regularly ask for feedback from your patients through text and email surveys. This allows you to identify potential issues and address them before they escalate to negative online reviews.
  4. Respond to Complaints Quickly: When you receive negative feedback, respond professionally and offer solutions. A quick, empathetic response can turn an unhappy patient into a loyal advocate.

Avoid Review Gating

While preventing negative reviews is important, it’s equally important to avoid unethical practices like review gating. Review gating is the practice of selectively filtering patient feedback by encouraging those with positive experiences to leave online reviews, while encouraging those with negative experiences to leave private feedback. Ultimately, review gating is not giving upset patients the same opportunity to leave online reviews that you give happy patients. This approach not only violates Google’s Terms of Service and FTC guidelines but also poses significant risks, including the suspension of a business’s Google Business Profile, hefty fines, and damage to patient trust. Click here to learn if your practice is engaged in review gating.

How Satisfied Patient Helps You Prevent Negative Reviews

Through Satisfied Patient’s automated surveys, you gain valuable patient feedback from all patients, helping you identify and resolve potential issues before they turn into negative reviews. Real-time email alerts ensure you are always in the loop regarding any negative feedback, and reply templates ensure that you respond in a timely manner.

Satisfied Patient offers centralized review management, making it easier to track upset patients and monitor your reputation among all the major platforms. Satisfied Patient has preloaded internal reply templates, which are used to quickly respond to negative feedback left in patient surveys. Satisfied Patient has also preloaded online review reply templates, allowing you to reply to online reviews in the matter of seconds. To take this a step further, we have also introduced automated online review replies, which ensure automated, HIPAA compliant responses for all online reviews.

Most importantly, Satisfied Patient ensures compliance with Google’s Terms of Service and FTC guidelines, helping practices avoid unethical practices like review gating. With proven strategies and helpful tools at your disposal, Satisfied Patient enables you to build a patient-first culture and maintain a strong, positive online reputation.

Conclusion

Preventing negative reviews doesn’t mean avoiding criticism altogether. It’s about creating a culture of open communication, consistently delivering excellent service, and responding to issues thoughtfully. By focusing on proactive strategies and avoiding unethical practices like review gating, you can build a solid foundation of trust and loyalty that minimizes the impact of negative feedback.

Next Steps

Below are 3 ways you can continue your journey to be the best practice:

  1. Schedule a demo with us to see what Satisfied Patient can do for you. We’ll personalize the session for your practice and answer any questions.
  2. Download The Negative Google Review Removal Guide in our collection of free tools to deliver an exceptional patient experience.
  3. Follow us on LinkedIn, YouTube, and Instagram for insights on how to be the best practice.
Negative Google Review Removal Guide

Negative Google Review Removal Guide

Removing a negative Google review helps you maintain a positive online reputation and remain a top practice on Google.

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