What is Healthgrades?
Healthgrades is an online review platform and physician directory. Healthgrades helps millions of patients find and connect with the right doctor or hospital. More specifically, Healthgrades helps patients:
- Search for top-rated doctors or hospitals,
- Read reviews from other patients, and
- Book appointments.
While Healthgrades creates physicians’ profiles based on information from government and commercially available services, physicians can (and should!) claim and edit these profiles.
Once a profile is claimed, physicians can add photos, age, gender, specialty information, credentials, and experience.
On Healthgrades.com, your patients can complete patient satisfaction surveys about their experiences with you and with your office/staff.
The survey provides patients with an opportunity to leave feedback as follows:
- Rate their experiences out of five stars for a variety of survey questions.
- Leave a review about their experiences.
Is Healthgrades free?
Yes! Healthgrades is advertiser supported and therefore free for consumers and patients to use.
Healthcare providers can claim their profile for free. There are also advertising options available for hospitals or medical groups to promote their providers on Healthgrades, and these profiles are clearly marked as sponsored profiles.
Where does the doctor data come from?
Data on Healthgrades is collected from a variety of sources, including the National Provider Identifier Registry, a government directory of all active providers in the country; surveys directly from patients; claims data from government and third party sources; and information that comes directly from providers or practices.
Are doctors paying to be on this site?
Every provider who has a listing with the National Provider Identifier Registry has a free profile on Healthgrades. There are advertising options available for hospitals or medical groups to promote their providers on our site, and these profiles are clearly marked as sponsored profiles.
How do I remove a negative review on Healthgrades?
There may be instances where you’d like to remove a negative review on Healthgrades.
Perhaps the review is dishonest, or maybe the patient clicked on one star when they meant to click five stars. Or perhaps the negative review isn’t even from a real patient. You may have never seen the patient in the first place, and the review was written for you by accident or even by a bot.
To flag a negative Healthgrades review that you believe displays inappropriate content or privacy information, click on the ellipsis (…) in the top right corner of the comment box and select “Flag Comment.” Complete the questionnaire and click “Submit Flag.” Once submitted, the customer service team will be notified of the flagged comment and will review based on Healthgrades’ review guidelines.
For a step-by-step walkthrough of flagging reviews across Healthgrades, Google, and Vitals, see our guide to removing reviews on major platforms.
Are there rules about what patients can and cannot say in Healthgrades reviews?
Yes, and those rules are listed within Healthgrades’ community guidelines. Any reviews that include name-calling, personal attacks, racist comments, threats, obscenities, phone numbers, email addresses, or URLs will not be posted on the Healthgrades site.
Can doctors pay to have bad reviews removed on Healthgrades?
No, doctors cannot pay to have negative Healthgrades reviews removed.
The only negative reviews that can be removed are those that violate Healthgrades’ review guidelines.
Because you’re unable to simply remove negative Healthgrades reviews, the more effective strategy is to build a strong volume of positive reviews so the occasional negative one carries less weight. When you have 200+ 5-star reviews, a single critical review changes your average rating by only a fraction of a point.
Can I remove my profile from Healthgrades?
Generally, no. Healthgrades aggregates publicly available information about healthcare providers as a free service to consumers. If you’re a practicing provider and your information is publicly available, Healthgrades’ policies prohibit full removal.
What you can do is claim your profile and ensure the information is accurate and complete. A claimed, well-maintained profile is far better than an unclaimed one.
Does my Healthgrades profile matter for AI search?
When a patient asks ChatGPT or Google’s AI Overviews to recommend a doctor nearby, those tools pull from a combination of sources. Healthgrades is one of them.
According to the rater8 2026 Patient Choice Report, 47% of patients have already used AI tools to research or compare providers — and your star rating and review volume factor into whether you show up in those results.
That means an unclaimed or outdated Healthgrades profile isn’t just a missed opportunity for patients browsing the directory. It can cost you visibility in AI search results, too.
The fix is the same as it’s always been: claim your profile, keep it updated, and make sure you’re consistently collecting authentic patient reviews.
Healthgrades' Review Guidelines
- Don’t post content that is libelous, defamatory, harassing, threatening, or inflammatory.
- Don’t use obscenities, profanity, or express intolerance for others on the basis of race, ethnicity, nationality, gender, gender identity, religion, sexual orientation, age, or disability.
- Don’t post content that is obscene or lewd.
- Don’t post misleading, deceptive or fraudulent content.
- Don’t post content that contains personal information including phone numbers, email addresses, mailing addresses, full name, or other personal information.
- Don’t post content with personal website links or mentions.
- Don’t impersonate other people or organizations, or pretend to be someone or something you are not.
- Don’t engage in name-calling or personal attacks.
- Don’t post content that mentions or endorses specific brands including pharmaceuticals.
- Don’t post content mentioning legal matters or proceedings.
- If your review is rejected for violating our business or privacy rules, you can submit a new review.
Once your Healthgrades listing is claimed, it’s important to optimize your profile by ensuring the information is complete and up-to-date. Once this is done, it’s time to start building your online reviews!
Last updated July 2026.
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