Before a patient calls a fertility clinic, they read what other patients said about it. Usually that means the reviews on your Google Business Profile, because they sit right beside your name in the search results and on the map. Those reviews also feed local search: Google names prominence, which takes in review count and rating, as one of the factors it uses to rank local results.
So online reviews matter twice, once for being found and once for being chosen. They are also harder for a fertility clinic than for almost any other business. Outcomes are uncertain and private, many patients would never post publicly about treatment, and your replies are bound by HIPAA. This post covers both halves: how to get more reviews honestly, and how to answer them without creating a compliance problem.
Why fertility clinics get fewer reviews than they deserve
Most clinics have far fewer reviews than their patient numbers would suggest. The reasons are predictable:
- Privacy. A review under your own Google name tells everyone you know that you went through fertility treatment. Plenty of happy patients will not do that.
- Timing. The natural moment to ask, at the end of treatment, is the one moment you cannot ask without knowing how treatment went.
- Nobody owns it. Asking for reviews is everyone’s job in theory and no one’s job in practice, so it happens when someone remembers.
Only the third of those is fully fixable. But fixing the third, and being careful about the first two, is usually enough to move a profile from a handful of reviews to a steady flow.
When to ask
Ask about the experience, not the outcome. Patients who had a good experience of your people, your communication and your care are often glad to say so whatever happened with their treatment. The ask has to be tied to a moment that was positive in itself:
- after a first consultation that went well, when the patient leaves with a clear plan;
- after a coordinator has solved something real, such as an insurance question or a scheduling problem;
- at a natural milestone the patient has said they are happy with.
Then leave it to the person who knows the patient. A coordinator who can see that someone is upset will not ask. An automated text sent to every patient on day 30 will, and it will land on someone whose cycle just failed. That is the single biggest way review requests go wrong in this specialty, so if you automate the sending, keep a human deciding who receives it.
How to ask
Make it one tap. Google gives every Business Profile a short review link, and the request should contain that link and almost nothing else:
Thank you for coming in today. If you have a minute, we would be grateful for a review of your experience with our team: [link]. Please don’t include any medical details you would rather keep private.
That last line is worth keeping. It protects the patient, and it means fewer reviews that contain information you then have to be careful around.
Text usually works better than email for this, because the patient is holding the phone that the link opens on. A QR code at reception or on the discharge paperwork covers patients who prefer to do it later.
What you are not allowed to do
Several common review tactics break Google’s rules, the FTC’s, or both:
- No incentives. Discounts, gift cards or entry into a draw in exchange for a review are against Google’s policy for Business Profile reviews.
- No review gating. Asking patients privately how they felt first, and only sending the happy ones to Google, is against Google’s policy. Under the FTC’s consumer reviews rule, which took effect in 2024, offering incentives conditioned on a positive review is unlawful too.
- No staff or family reviews, and no reviews written by an agency. Fake reviews are now directly prohibited by that FTC rule, with civil penalties attached.
- No suppressing negative reviews through threats or by pressuring patients to take them down.
Breaking Google’s rules can mean reviews being removed or the profile being restricted. Breaking the FTC’s can mean penalties. Neither is worth a better star rating, and a profile with a few honest complaints reads as more real than a wall of five-star reviews anyway.
Replying to positive reviews
Reply to them. A short, warm, specific reply shows the next reader that a real person runs the profile. But even here, the rule from the section below applies: do not confirm that the reviewer is a patient or mention anything about their care.
“Thank you so much for taking the time to write this. Our team will be really glad to read it” is safe. “We’re so happy your second transfer worked, and congratulations on the twins!” is a disclosure, even if the reviewer said it first.
Replying to negative reviews without breaking HIPAA
This is where clinics get into real trouble, because the instinct is to explain. The patient has posted something unfair or incomplete, the clinic knows the full story, and the reply sets the record straight. That reply can be a HIPAA violation.
The Office for Civil Rights at HHS has enforced this more than once. In 2019 a Texas dental practice paid $10,000 after replying to a Yelp review with a patient’s last name, treatment plan and insurance details. In 2023 a New Jersey practice agreed to pay $30,000 and a two-year corrective action plan after replies to Google reviews disclosed patients’ health information.
The principle is simple. The patient posting about their own care does not give you permission to post about it. Under HIPAA, the fact that someone is your patient is itself protected health information (PHI), and so is anything about their treatment. Their review is their choice. Your reply is a disclosure by a covered entity, and it needs their written authorisation, which you will not have.
In practice that means a negative review reply should:
- not confirm that the reviewer is or was a patient. Not even “we’re sorry your visit didn’t meet expectations”, because that confirms a visit;
- not mention treatment, dates, test results, staff interactions or anything else from the record;
- move the conversation offline, to a named role and a phone number;
- be the same short, calm reply every time, so there is never a judgement call made under pressure.
A template that works:
Thank you for your feedback. We take every concern seriously, but privacy law means we can’t discuss anyone’s care here. We’d welcome the chance to talk this through directly. Please call our patient experience lead on [number].
Then make sure someone actually takes that call. A reply that offers a conversation nobody follows up on reads worse than no reply at all.
When a review should come down
You can flag a review to Google if it breaks Google’s own policies: spam, a review of the wrong business, offensive content, or one written by someone who was never a patient. Google decides, and it will not remove a review just because it is negative or because the clinic disagrees with it.
Never ask the patient to take it down in exchange for anything. If the review raises a real problem, the better outcome is fixing it, and patients sometimes update a review by themselves after a good conversation.
Who should be allowed to reply
Decide this once and write it down. One or two named people reply to reviews, using approved templates, and anything unusual goes to whoever handles privacy at the clinic before a word is posted. That rule matters most when an agency manages your profile: whoever replies on your behalf needs the same templates, the same limits, and a business associate agreement if they can see any patient information. Our questions to ask a fertility marketing agency covers the BAA question in more detail.
Make the reviews do their job on your site
Reviews mostly live on Google, but patients also want to see them at the moment of decision. Put a few recent ones, or a link to your Google reviews, on your treatment pages near the phone number and the form. Use only reviews the patient posted publicly themselves, quote them exactly, and never edit them to sound better. Never publish a testimonial the patient has not agreed to.
Reviews are the sixth of our IVF clinic marketing ideas that cost time rather than budget, and they work alongside the rest of your local search. Asking at the right moment is part of the follow-up we set up in lead capture and automation.
This is general guidance, not legal advice. If a reply raises any doubt, your privacy officer has the final say.
If you want to know where reviews sit among the changes your site needs, the free website plan covers it alongside everything else on the path to a booked consultation.
