A physician's online reputation used to be word-of-mouth. Now it is a four-star average on Google, a comment thread on Healthgrades, and a rating on Zocdoc that prospective patients read before they ever call your front desk.
This matters in two distinct ways. First, it affects patient acquisition directly. Industry benchmarks suggest a meaningful portion of patients check online reviews before choosing a doctor, and many report that a low average rating causes them to look elsewhere — even if the physician comes with a strong referral. Second, it affects local search rankings. Google uses review signals — quantity, recency, and rating — as part of its local ranking algorithm. A practice with a low review count or a declining average can lose Map Pack visibility even if everything else in its SEO profile is strong.
The compounding effect is what catches most practices off guard. A single unanswered negative review does not just look bad to the patient who reads it. It signals to Google that your practice may not be actively managed. It signals to prospective patients that no one at the practice cares enough to respond. And if the response that does get posted accidentally acknowledges the reviewer was a patient, it creates a HIPAA exposure risk on top of the reputational one.
Reputation management for physicians is not about suppressing criticism. It is about building a review profile that accurately reflects the quality of care you provide, responding to feedback in a way that demonstrates professionalism without creating legal risk, and monitoring closely enough that you know about problems before they compound.
The practices that do this well share one trait: they treat review management as an operational process, not a reaction to crises.