Short answer
Respond professionally and promptly, without confirming or denying that the reviewer was ever a patient, since doing so can breach patient privacy obligations regardless of what the review itself claims. Acknowledge the concern generally, invite them to contact the practice directly to discuss it, and avoid emotional or defensive language. A calm, prepared approach beats an improvised one nearly every time. This applies equally to short, one-line reviews and long, detailed complaints.
Why you can't simply explain your side of the story
It's tempting to respond to an unfair-seeming review by explaining exactly what happened from the practice's perspective, but doing so risks confirming that the reviewer was a patient and disclosing details about their care, both of which can breach privacy obligations even if the reviewer raised the details first. A safe, general response protects the practice regardless of how much the reviewer chooses to disclose about themselves.
A practical response structure that works
Thank them for the feedback, express genuine concern without confirming any specific details, and invite them to contact the practice directly, by phone or email, to discuss further. Something like: "Thank you for sharing this. We take feedback seriously and would like the chance to understand your experience better. Please contact our practice manager on [number] so we can look into this properly." This response works regardless of whether the underlying complaint is fair, exaggerated, or based on a misunderstanding.
What not to do
Don't respond while frustrated, a defensive or dismissive tone tends to damage trust with everyone else reading the review far more than the original complaint did. Don't confirm treatment details, dates of visits, or anything else that could identify the reviewer as a patient. And don't ignore it entirely, an unanswered negative review, especially a detailed one, often looks worse to a prospective patient than a professionally handled response to the same review.
When a review might breach Google's own policies
If a review is clearly fake, from someone who was never actually a patient, or contains content that breaches Google's review policies, you can flag it for removal through Google's official process. This is different from simply disagreeing with a genuine patient's negative experience, which isn't grounds for removal even if you believe the review is unfair.
What to do if the review contains factually incorrect information
It is tempting to correct the record publicly when a review states something untrue, wrong appointment date, wrong staff member, wrong treatment, but the safer path is still a general, non-specific response inviting direct contact, since publicly disputing specifics risks the same privacy exposure as confirming them. If the review is severe enough to warrant more, raise it with the practice's own complaints or legal process rather than litigating the facts in the public review thread, which rarely resolves in the practice's favour regardless of who is actually correct.
Building a simple, repeatable process rather than reacting case by case
Rather than deciding how to respond fresh every time a negative review appears, it helps to have a short, pre-agreed template and an internal escalation path for anything unusually serious, so whoever is managing your online presence is not making high-stakes privacy and tone decisions under pressure in the moment. A calm, consistent process applied every time tends to produce better outcomes than even a well-intentioned but improvised response written in frustration shortly after the review appears.