What To Do With Dishonest Patients Writing Negative Reviews?

Unfortunately, as a plastic surgeon, you will have dishonest patients. These patients will take every opportunity to talk in a most disparaging manner about your abilities as a plastic surgeon, your personality or bedside manner, your office staff, your office, and even your family.

It is hard to imagine a world in which the most sinister of individuals will write dishonest reviews in an attempt to get refunds or free revision surgery. However, it happens every day. The best thing to do is to avoid these absurd individuals prior to surgery. Dr. Kenneth Hughes cancels or refuses surgery on at least 20% of the patients he sees in consultation. However, many of the patients seeking surgery will be on their best behavior prior to surgery only to emerge as their true evil identities afterwards.

To some extent, the best strategy to deal with these dishonest reviews and these dishonest patients is just to ignore them. Any intelligent and educated potential patient that you would want as a patient will be able to identify the lunatics and morons accordingly. Most of the time this is a good idea, because it is simply not worth your time to dignify these nonsensical accounts with a response.

If an individual is particularly nasty and you feel a response is merited, let one of your lawyers be your mouthpiece. Most patients think that they may say anything they want without any fear of retribution. The truth is that any defamatory thing written by a patient that can be proven wrong will result in a judgment for the doctor. Some of these judgments may be many times the value of a particular surgery. Having a complete medical record, before and after pictures, and videos in particular are hard to overcome in a court of law. What can a patient say if their review says one procedure was not performed but the video shows the procedure being performed? Not much. These cases really are this straightforward and simple.

Future discussions to follow.