Facebook never checks
whether they were a patient.
Meta says plainly that it does not verify that the people recommending a business used the service. For most trades that is a nuisance. For a dental practice it is the safest fact on the page, because it means a reply that treats the writer as a patient is a claim the practice cannot support and does not need to make.
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What Meta counts, and what a reply may confirm
Four things Meta documents about Recommendations, and one the American Dental Association documents about answering them. Two of the five change how a practice should write, and one is a trap that looks like a solution.
Meta states that it does not verify that the people reviewing or recommending a Page bought the product or used the service.
Nothing about a recommendation establishes a treatment relationship, so a reply that thanks somebody for their visit is asserting something the practice has not checked.
Only recommendations shared publicly count toward the Page's overall rating. A restricted audience means the writer sees it and the rating does not.
The count an admin sees and the count a stranger sees can differ, which is worth knowing before anybody concludes a review was deleted.
Until at least five reviews have landed, Meta shows no rating on the Page at all.
A new practice's Page is not underperforming, it is below the floor. The first five are the ones that turn the number on.
Meta documents a Page setting that turns Recommendations off, and says using it removes the rating and the reviews from the Page along with them.
It is the one platform here with a switch, and pulling it takes the good ones with the bad. A Page with no rating reads to a prospective patient as a Page with something to hide.
The American Dental Association's own guidance is that a patient who names themselves in a review has not waived their right to privacy, and that a reply still cannot confirm the person is a patient.
The ADA's examples of what breaks that are all the warm ones: thank you for coming in, we appreciate our patients, we love treating your kids. On a Page made of recommendations, that is most of what a practice wants to type.
Replying to somebody who may not be a patient
This is the reply that goes wrong most often, because the polite instinct and the safe instinct point in opposite directions. The ADA's own examples of a reply that breaks patient privacy are the friendly ones: thank you for coming in, we appreciate our patients, we love treating your kids. Warmth here reads as confirmation, and confirmation is what all three federal actions over dental review replies turned on. None of those three involved Facebook, which changes nothing: what was published was a name beside a treatment, and a Page publishes that just as well as a review site does.
Warm, and a disclosure anyway
So glad the whitening went well, Dan! Lovely to see you back after the deep clean in the spring. Tell Marie we said hello and we will see you both at the six month check.
Warm, and about nothing
Thank you, this is a lovely thing to read on a Monday. The whole team appreciates it, and we will pass it on to everyone who was in that day.
The second reply is just as friendly and contains no procedure, no interval, no second name and no confirmation that anybody was ever in the building. On a platform where nothing establishes that the writer is a patient, that is also simply the accurate reply.
Sources
- Protect your practice's reputation American Dental Association. Read 2026-09-10.
- Dental Practice Pays $10,000 to Settle Social Media Disclosures of Patients' Protected Health Information HHS Office for Civil Rights. Dated 2019-10-02. Read 2026-09-10.
- HHS Civil Rights Office Enters Settlement with Dental Practice Over Disclosures of Patients' Protected Health Information HHS Office for Civil Rights. Dated 2022-12-14. Read 2026-09-10.
- Dr. U. Phillip Igbinadolor, D.M.D. & Associates, P.A. (UPI) HIPAA Enforcement Action HHS Office for Civil Rights. Read 2026-09-10.
Where else a practice is being read
A Facebook Page is usually the third or fourth listing a prospective patient finds. Connect the rest and every review across them arrives in one place with a draft ready.
- Yelp
- TripAdvisor
- DoorDash
- Trustpilot
- Etsy
- Square
Facebook questions from practices
Starting with the one every practice reaches for first.
Can we just turn Recommendations off?
You can. Meta says turning them off removes the rating and the reviews from the Page entirely, so the good ones go with the bad and the Page arrives at a prospective patient with nothing on it. That reads worse than a mixed rating does, and it is a very visible thing to have done.
The reviewer named themselves and said they are our patient. Does that free us up?
No. The ADA puts it plainly: a patient who identifies themself in a review has not waived their right to privacy, and a reply still cannot confirm that the person is a patient. Its own examples of what crosses the line are the friendly ones, which is why the safe reply on a Page is broad language about all patients rather than a warm word about this one.
Somebody who was never a patient left a recommendation. What now?
Reply to it the same way you would reply to anyone: thank them, say nothing about care, and do not state that they were not a patient. That statement is about your records. If it breaks Meta's rules it can be reported through the Page, which is a separate path from the reply.
Why does our review count look different to a patient's?
Meta says only publicly shared recommendations count toward the Page rating, and a recommendation shared with a limited audience is visible only to that audience. An admin view and a stranger's view can therefore show different numbers without anything being wrong.
Do you sign a HIPAA Business Associate Agreement?
Not yet. The answer is the same across every dental page here, and it sits in the FAQ rather than a footnote because it is the question that decides whether the rest of this is relevant to your practice.
Does GetSetReply reply on the Page for us?
No. We draft, you post. The draft is written against the review and handed over, and you decide whether it goes anywhere. Nothing is published on your behalf on any platform we connect.
Reviews and dental practices, elsewhere on this site
For dental practices
Friendly replies that give nothing away
Written against the review, handed to you to post. We do not yet provide a HIPAA Business Associate Agreement.