Healthgrades

I left reviews of two physicians on Healthgrades. One was a very positive review, the other a negative review. I received a confirmation email that my reviews were approved and would appear within 24 to 48 hours. It has been two weeks and they still have not appeared. I tried to contact Healthgrades via email and have not received any kind of response. I am very disappointed in this company.

Recently, one individual left 2 vicious and personal reviews of me on Healthgrades on the same day. From the wording, I strongly suspect the writer is the severely disturbed relative of a long time patient of mine. The reviewer came to my office once 1 1/2 years ago, loudly ridiculed patients waiting to see another physician and screamed at and threatened my staff and me for reasons only known to him. My patient (his relative) and I tried to calm him, to no avail.

Extremely bad company. Have had fake reviews posted that they will not remove despite multiple requests. Looking into a lawyer to file a multimillion dollar class action to ensure this nonsense website shuts down.

Healthgrades posted a 1-star negative review from a non-patient (someone who called the office inquiring about narcotics and was declined to be seen at our clinic). They gave 1-stars across multiple parameters without ever stepping foot inside the clinic or seeing anyone on our staff. Healthgrades refused to remove this obviously out of character fake review.

An anonymous person left a Healthgrades claiming that as a physician we broke their daughter's neck. First and foremost that has never happened, second we are not doing adjustments, third we have never had a description of the patient that it was left about. We contacted Healthgrades as this was another physician that left it, wording etc it was the physician I had previously worked for and left who said they were going to leave reviews everywhere. We have went through this same process with Yelp, Google etc and are now perusing legal litigation against this person. Healthgrades deemed they cannot remove it so fake people can leave reviews but actual positive reviews do not get posted. Defamatory libel statements from patients that do not exists ruin the reputation of hard working physicians.

I'm a physician and almost all my Healthgrades reviews are negative, and some of the seem to be written by the same person. All are anonymous. Question for Healthgrades, how can my Healthgrades reviews be so poor, but my institutions internal Press Ganey are mostly 5 star? Something is fishy.

Reviews from top-rated MD posted on page of diff MD from another city. There are two MDs with the same name who both appear to be orthopedic surgeons. They practice in two distant states (the one with the 5-star reviews is in Illinois and the one with no reviews of his own is in Pennsylvania). They appear to be both named Venkat **. Whether the problem was caused by the unrated doctor submitting the good doctor's reviews as his own, or a disastrously flawed Healthgrades website system is unknown, but even if the unrated doctor entered the false info himself, a functional system should have flagged it and taked action when all the reviews for a Pittsburgh practitioner came from Floss, IL. I don't suggest anyone trust info from Healthgrades. I am reporting this to the newspaper "USA Today" in hopes that they will expose the shabby practices of this rating group.

I am a physician who has been in practice for 20 years. I recently reviewed my ratings and reviews on Healthgrades, which allows anyone who claims to be a patient leave a review for me despite me never agreeing to be part of this site. There were personally disparaging and very similar comments left by, supposedly, independent reviewers. Half of the reviews left in the previous 6 months indicate in the review that the author is not actually the patient (one is a parent, one a husband of a patient, and one the daughter of the patient). I challenged the three reviews that were meant to be personally insulting; one was removed by Healthgrades.

Doctors just pay this site to write what they want and delete what they want. Very dangerous to people putting their life in someone’s hands. I was very manipulated thinking I was in good hands and my health was completely destroyed. These sites should be exposed for what they truly are.

I tried three times to submit a request to Healthgrades through their "Contact Us" online form that a patient review be removed from my profile not because it is critical but because it is inappropriate and inaccurate. It was not written by my (adult) patient but by his mother to whom he had not given consent to release his medical information or participate in his treatment; her statements about the costs of my services are untrue; and she made baseless defamatory accusations that I harmed her son and am dangerous. I have received no response from Healthgrades. It does not serve the public interest to have invalid reviews on a physician review site, nor does it protect the personal integrity and business reputations of competent physicians who have been unfairly victimized.