Doctors accused of leaving fake reviews on NHS Choices website

GPS are posing as patients and writing fake positive reviews on the NHS Choices website, health chiefs have claimed, prompting a row with family doctors.

Officials running the patient information service have revealed they are removing comments they suspect have been posted by practice staff to preserve the “integrity” of the site.

A total of 3,400 posts have been investigated for a variety of reasons so far this year, 58 per cent of which have since been removed. Doctors have reacted angrily to the revelations, with one union organiser saying the actions of NHS Choices were “demeaning”.

The site is the official online face of the health service in England, attracting more than 48million visitors a month with advice about illnesses and treatments, as well as information about individual providers, including ratings.

The current row emerged after website operators challenged a patient in Weston-super-mare, Somerset, who had posted a positive review of the Tudor Lodge Surgery, to prove she was not a member of staff.

Karen Thompson had praised the “kind, caring professionalism of all the staff ”. The comment was removed from the site until the author confirmed it was genuine, a course of action Ms Thompson described to as “offensive”.

Last year GPS at a conference of the British Medical Association voted to lobby for an end of patient reviews on NHS Choices, saying they enabled “trivial complaints” which took a disproportionate amount of time to address. Dr Mike Ingram, a BMA representative in Hertfordshire, told Pulse: “To actually find that positive reviews are suspected is extremely demeaning, and not only that, it suggests that general practices have got nothing better to do at this incredibly busy time than to run around trying to generate artificial positive reviews like a naff restaurant on Tripadvisor.”

However, a spokesman for NHS Choices, which receives around 150,000 reviews a year, said: “We take the integrity of these reviews seriously because they inform patient choices, so if a concern is raised about a review (whether positive, negative or neutral) then we don’t publish it until we have investigated. Our investigations involve contacting the person who posted the review as often there is simply a misunderstanding.

“The vast majority of the reviews that are removed are due to mistaken identity. For example, where a review has been left for the wrong provider.”