What Healthgrades Will Actually Remove — and What It Won’t
A genuine patient’s unflattering account of their visit stays up, even if it’s harsh. Here’s what does qualify for removal, and how the dispute process actually works — without ever asking a practice to confirm what happened with a specific patient.
Yes, in specific cases — Healthgrades’ Community Review Guidelines prohibit false, misleading, or fabricated content; personal attacks, name-calling, racist comments, or threats; profanity, harassment, or obscenity; exposed personal information such as phone numbers, emails, or URLs; and content that discriminates against or disparages someone on the basis of race, religion, national origin, gender, or similar protected status. A genuine patient’s honest but unflattering account of their own visit is not, by itself, grounds for removal — and a practice can dispute a review without confirming or denying that the reviewer was ever a patient.
What qualifies for removal
- The review contains false, misleading, or fabricated content rather than a genuine account of a visit
- The content includes personal attacks, name-calling, racist comments, or threats
- The review contains profanity, harassment, or obscenity
- The content exposes personal information such as phone numbers, email addresses, or URLs
- The content discriminates against or disparages someone on the basis of a protected status
Frequently asked questions
A provider who has claimed their free Healthgrades profile can flag a specific review from the Provider Center, select the guideline it violates from the options provided, and add a concise, evidence-based explanation. A response built on documentation — such as no record of an appointment matching the description — holds up better than a general objection to the tone of the review.
Healthgrades doesn’t publish a fixed turnaround, and reported timelines vary by case; a flagged review typically gets a decision within a few weeks. Flagging starts a review of the content — it doesn’t guarantee removal.
Healthgrades’ decisions on flagged content are generally treated as final, with limited room for appeal short of providing evidence that wasn’t part of the original flag. A practice should never respond to a denied dispute by confirming or discussing a specific patient’s care publicly, even in frustration.