Occasionally we have the issue of a doctor who has a negative review on DoctorBase threaten to quit using our blog software-as-a-service if the review isn’t taken down.

We’re not trying to be holier than thou, but we have a responsibility to the other dentists and doctors and their reputations online. If it was known that their blogging platform (in this case DoctorBase) allowed for reviews to be altered or edited – everyone’s reputation would suffer .

The world is filled with great health-care providers – who know very little about the Web and social media. Most fail to understand that trying to be anything but transparent to the public will actually hurt their reputation far more than one or two negative reviews (especially when there are twenty other glowingly positive reviews from verified patients).

It’s our job to protect both patients AND doctors.

Allowing for a loose reviews policy can damage your brand, and the brand of those associated with it. Take the instance of yelp, who recently became the subject of various class action lawsuits regarding their reviews policies. They will most likely survive the lawsuits, but will their brand survive the growing negative public opinion?

* I personally love yelp’s service for restaurants, and in no way am I implying that yelp is actually responsible for what they’re being accused of. That’s for a court to decide.

The public reaction to the lawsuit announcement on SFgate wasn't pretty - or tame.