Reputation,Defamation & Online Review Policy
OUR STANCE
Regent Street Clinic™ is very proud of its strong reputation, diligently built up over many years, a reputation for high-quality medical care provision, fairness, openness, willingness to learn and to be sympathetic to the most important people in our clinics – our patients.
We will always endeavour to ensure that patients are happy with the service they receive at our clinics. If this is not the case, we would value the opportunity to make things right.
We welcome all genuine patient feedback in a spirit of openness and a continual attempt to improve our service.
Our aim is to provide a positive experience for our patients, whose opinions we value greatly.
Having said this, we understand and appreciate that there may be times when these high standards may slip, where human error may occur and where the general service-user experience may be sub-optimal.
Ultimately our patients are our primary concern and when patients have received a below-par service, we will be sympathetic to their concerns, we will apologise for our shortcomings and we will be trying our very hardest to turn the negative experience into a positive one wherever possible.
NEGATIVE REVIEWS
Negative reviews are unpleasant for businesses that genuinely care about their service-users, however they also have potential to highlight areas that can be improved and are important learning tools that can help to optimise business practices.
For all genuine negative reviewers, our policy is to make contact at the earliest opportunity, to apologise for the shortcomings and to attempt to put things right.
Patient satisfaction is at the core of our mission statement.
On many occasions we have used genuine negative reviews at practice meetings, with reflection and learning, leading to a better service for patients.
FAKE REVIEWS
Disingenuous (or ‘fake’) negative reviews carry a totally different stance, with an aggressive policy to defend our reputation.
These reviews also carry a criminal element in terms of how they may be viewed from a legal perspective.
If we are unable to identify patients who have left a negative review, or if our threshold for suspicion that the review may be disingenuous is met, then we will consider whether the review may be harmful.
We will reply to all such reviews requesting reviewers to forward all details relating to their visit to our clinics, such as the date of their visit, the location of the clinic, the service they attended for and which members of staff they saw during the visit.
Our in-house company legal team is alerted to suspicious or defamatory issues, and will vigorously pursue potentially disingenuous reviews, libellous or slanderous matters with potential for harm, through the courts, with a substantial personal claim for defamation against the individual or company involved.
We have successfully followed this route recently with two separate ‘anonymous’ reviewers that were disingenuous and who were identified and successfully prosecuted.
The IP address and other identifying information are now easily recoverable by internet service providers and the police.
Our desire to defend our reputation against defamation, as well as our legal fund available to pursue this issue, is limitless.