84% of patients check reviews before choosing a doctor. Replying is where practices get it wrong.
Online reviews now weigh more than a friend’s recommendation for many patients. For doctors, both halves of the job — getting reviews and answering them — come with rules most businesses never face.
In its 2025 report How Patients Choose Their Doctors, the reputation company rater8 surveyed more than 1,000 patients in the United States. 84% said they check online reviews before selecting a new provider; 51% read at least six reviews; and 61% now prioritise online reviews over referrals from friends and family. The data is American, but the mechanism is not: the review profile is often the first impression a practice makes, before the website and long before the waiting room.
The silent majority
The same survey shows the problem. 57% of patients rarely or never leave reviews. Satisfied patients go home; dissatisfied ones write. The result is a review profile skewed towards the extremes — unless the practice asks. And asking works: 74% of respondents said they would be more inclined to leave a review if their provider asked them to.
How to ask — within the rules
Google’s policies on fake engagement are explicit. A business may not offer incentives — payment, discounts, free goods or services — in exchange for reviews, and may not ‘discourage or prohibit negative reviews, or selectively solicit positive reviews from customers’. In practice that rules out the most common shortcut, asking only the patients who seemed happy. A compliant approach asks everyone, neutrally: a card at the reception desk, a QR code in the waiting room, a line on the practice website.
How to reply — within confidentiality
Here doctors face a constraint that other businesses do not. In Germany, breaching medical confidentiality is a criminal offence under § 203 of the Criminal Code (StGB); in Czechia, healthcare professionals are bound by the duty of confidentiality in § 51 of Act No. 372/2011 Coll. on health services. A reply that confirms someone was a patient, or refers to their diagnosis or treatment, can breach that duty. As the Deutsches Ärzteblatt has noted, confidentiality makes meaningful public responses very difficult.
That does not mean silence. 45% of patients in the rater8 survey said they value providers who respond, and 41% said their trust increases when they see responses. The safe pattern is short and generic: thank the reviewer, do not confirm or deny a treatment relationship, mention nothing clinical, and invite them to contact the practice directly.
When a review is unlawful
Reviews from people who were never patients, or that contain false factual claims, can be challenged. In Germany, case law requires platforms to investigate complaints and, where the doctor disputes it, to have the reviewer substantiate the treatment contact. If the platform procedure fails, court action can be the remaining route. Document the complaint, use the platform’s dispute function first, and keep replies calm in the meantime — future patients read the reply too.
How FIB Consulting approaches it
We set up neutral review requests that follow Google’s policies, link the practice website to its review profiles, and give the team reply guidelines that stay within confidentiality. See our medical IT work or get in touch.
Sources
rater8, “How Patients Choose Their Doctors” (2025), as reported by Medical Economics, 18 February 2025 · Google, Maps user-contributed content policy: fake engagement · Deutsches Ärzteblatt, “Bewertungsportale: Wann sich Ärzte wehren sollten” · § 203 StGB (Germany) · § 51 of Act No. 372/2011 Coll. on health services (Czechia).
Reputation, handled within the rules.
We set up review flows and response guidelines that respect confidentiality — and Google’s policies.
Get in touch →