Primary medical institutions suffer from negative reviews on major internet portals that are not based on facts but reviewers’ subjective emotions, doctors said.

Clinic owners are particularly unhappy about how Naver runs the review system.

The nation’s largest internet portal allows users to review a business and leave a star rating after verifying that the user visited the business site with a receipt.

If a user scans a receipt with a smartphone, Naver automatically reads the information of the receipt issuer so that the user can post a review and a star rating. If the place is not confirmed, the user can designate it directly. In this case, Naver checks whether the receipt matches the business site and exposes the review.

Despite Naver’s monitoring, some users use receipts from other businesses such as a restaurant to post a review on a medical institution, doctors said. So even if the user intentionally gives a low rating on the clinic using a wrong receipt, the review can still look reliable.

The situation got so worse that the Korean Medical Practitioners Association (KMPA) decided to survey clinics.

An increasing number of clinic owners are complaining about poor ratings on the internet, KPMA said.

The association started a poll to identify damages caused by mean reviews on portal sites, including Naver.

On Monday, the KMPA said one clinic owner found that a reviewer who gave one star out of five to the clinic used a receipt from a fried chicken restaurant.

Another reviewer used a receipt from a medical institution in Busan to review a Seoul clinic.

A third user registered a receipt from a dentist clinic for a review on an internal medicine clinic.

Negative reviews mostly cited absurd reasons with unclear facts, such as “I felt upset because the employee kept laughing while I was getting counseling” and “The doctor is nice, but the treatment seemed excessive.”

The KMPA also found that one clinic took advantage of the review system to promote the clinic. The clinic maintained high star ratings and excellent reviews by offering gifts to those who leave good reviews using a receipt.

The KMPA decided to collect cases of damages from all KMPA members and jointly work with the Korean Medical Association (KMA).

The upcoming survey will figure out how many member clinics were affected by Naver receipt reviews or those from other portal sites and whether it led to a decrease in sales or relocating the clinic.

“There were too many complaints from clinics that they were suffering from spiteful reviews, so we decided to investigate,” said Kim Dong-seok, president of the KMPA.

Searching for the name of a medical institution on portal sites such as Naver will lead to reviews, and a malicious review can damage the clinic easily, he went on to say.

“If our fact-finding investigation shows any illegal case, we will take an active response.”

The investigation also aims to encourage self-purification among clinics, Kim added.

Clinics that manipulate reviews for marketing could be referred to the KMA’s central ethics committee, he warned.

Amid intense competition among clinics, some use the review system for advertising themselves, according to Kim.

“If we confirm a violation of the Medical Service Act, we will refer the case to the KMA’s ethics committee,” he said.