Small business owners (including doctors) have strong linkages between their personal identity and the business' identity, but doctors often take negative patient reviews even more personally than most business owners.
Patients' reviews can be highly emotional due to the circumstances the reviewer is going through due to their medical treatment: health-related stress, worry about family, and financial burdens of treatment.
Restaurant customers can tell if a steak is overcooked or a plate is dirty, but patients can't judge the quality of medical advice or treatment. Doctors often complain that patients lack the medical expertise to evaluate whether the doctor gave sound medical advice.
If a reviewer complains about or questions the doctor's medical attention or advice, the physician may not be able to respond. They could be found in violation of rules regarding patient privacy.
This recent Forbes article outlines more differences.
At TalkToTheManager, we help doctors' practices by not reducing the number of online reviews, but changing the reviewer's opinion of the doctor's practice before the review is posted. Our goal is to help the business get more positive and fewer negative over time. The abundance of positive reviews will outweigh the negative reviews and increase the overall rating.