What we publish, and what we remove

Who can write one

Anyone who has verified a phone number by SMS. That is the only requirement, and it exists to make the next two rules enforceable rather than aspirational.

• One review per person per clinic. The database enforces this; a second one cannot be written, only the first edited.
• The account is the identity, not the name. Changing your display name does not get you another review, and losing access to a number does not detach you from what you wrote.

We do not require proof of treatment. Asking for an invoice would exclude most honest reviewers and would not stop a determined dishonest one, so the check is on the person being real and singular, and the judgement is on what they wrote.

Everything is read before it is published

A review is stored as awaiting review and is not visible to anybody but its author until a moderator has read it. There is no automatic publication and no trusted-reviewer shortcut.

You can see the status of everything you have written on your profile: awaiting review, published, or not published.

Editing a review returns it to the queue. It leaves the clinic page until it has been read again. That is not friction for its own sake: without it, approval could be obtained with an innocuous review and spent on a different one afterwards.

What gets removed

A review is not published, or is taken down, if it does any of the following.

• It is not about a visit to that clinic. Second-hand accounts, reviews of a different branch, and anything that is really about ClinicPicker rather than the clinic. The last of those belongs in support, where somebody will actually act on it.
• It abuses or threatens somebody. Insults aimed at a person, harassment, and content attacking people for who they are rather than for what happened.
• It publishes personal data. Phone numbers, addresses, ID or insurance numbers, and anything about another patient. Naming a doctor you were treated by is fine; publishing their home address is not.
• It advertises. Promotion of another clinic or service, referral links, contact details soliciting business.
• It is written by someone with a stake in the outcome. Staff, owners, agencies acting for a clinic, and competitors. This applies equally to a five-star review written by the clinic and a one-star review written by its rival.
• It is coordinated or manipulated. Multiple accounts, incentivised reviews, or a burst of ratings that appear together.
• It is unlawful where we operate, or asserts as fact something demonstrably false about an identifiable person.

A removed review shows as not published on its author's profile. We do not delete it silently and leave someone believing it is live.

What does not get a review removed

This list matters more than the one above, because it is the part that makes a good rating here mean anything.

• Being negative. A one-star review of a real visit stays up.
• The clinic disagreeing with it. Disagreement is not evidence. Tell us what actually happened and a moderator will look again — that is a re-reading, not a removal.
• The clinic paying us. A sponsored placement buys a position on a listing page and nothing else. The rules on this page are the same for a clinic that has never contacted us.
• Being short, blunt or badly spelled. We are not editing for quality.
• Being old. Reviews are dated so a reader can weigh them; they are not retired for age.

What clinics can and cannot do

Claiming a listing gives a clinic control over its own details — address, opening hours, description, photographs. It conveys no power over reviews at all: not to remove one, not to edit one, not to reorder them, and not to see who wrote one beyond what is already on the page.

Replying to reviews is not built yet. Until it is, a clinic that believes a review is factually wrong should write to us with what happened.

Google reviews are not ours to moderate

A clinic page carries Google's reviews on a separate tab. We do not moderate them, edit them, reorder them or remove them, and we do not accept requests to — they are Google's, they are labelled as Google's, and this policy does not apply to them.

If a Google review breaks Google's rules, it has to be reported to Google.

If you disagree with a decision

Write to us through support and choose "a review I wrote". Tell us which review and why you think the decision was wrong. A different person looks at it.

You can also edit your own review at any time from your profile, or ask us to delete it. Deleting your account removes everything you have written along with it.

These rules are applied by people, not by a filter, and people get things wrong. Telling us is how they get fixed.