Policy
How we moderate reviews
Nova publishes reviews of fertility clinics written by patients. This page says what we publish, what we do not, and what happens when somebody tells us a review is wrong. It is the policy we actually follow, not a summary of one.
Nothing publishes itself
Every review is read by a person before it appears. There is no automatic publication and no algorithmic filter — a submitted review sits unpublished until somebody has looked at it.
What we remove
- Anything naming an individual member of staff. Criticism of a clinic is fair; naming a nurse is not.
- Anything that identifies another patient.
- Claims of clinical negligence. Those belong with the regulator or a solicitor, and we say so rather than publish them.
- Abuse, and content posted to damage rather than to inform.
- Reviews from people with a commercial interest in the clinic or its competitors.
What we do not remove
A review is not removed for being negative, and a clinic disagreeing with it is not grounds by itself. If it describes somebody’s genuine experience and breaks none of the rules above, it stays — and the clinic is given a reply.
Outcome is never part of a score
Most fertility treatment does not succeed first time, so most reviews are written after a disappointment. We record the outcome of a cycle so scores can be read separately by it — never as a rating. A clinic is not marked down because a cycle did not work.
What “tracked in Nova” means, and what it does not
A review is marked Tracked in Nova when the person recorded a cycle at that clinic in the Nova app, on their own, as they went. That is the whole of it. We have not contacted the clinic, seen a letter, an invoice or a discharge summary, or confirmed with anybody that the treatment happened.
We used to call this Verified patient. It was the wrong word: nothing was verified. Somebody can create a Nova account and log a cycle at any clinic in the directory without ever having been there, and the badge would have appeared. Calling that verified told readers we had checked something we had not.
Reviews without the badge are published on exactly the same terms and shown in the same place. The badge is a note about where the review came from, not a mark of quality, accuracy or trustworthiness — and you should not read an unbadged review as less reliable than a badged one.
Every clinic gets a reply, free, permanently
Any clinic may respond to any review about it. The reply appears directly underneath, clearly labelled. It is free and always will be — a platform where only one side can speak is a complaints board, and this is not one.
Scores are withheld until there are enough of them
We do not publish a score for a clinic with only a handful of reviews. Below the threshold we show the reviews themselves and no computed score, and we say how many more are needed. A score is never shown anywhere on this site without the number of reviews it was calculated from.
If you think a review is wrong
Report it. We follow the process set out in section 5 of the Defamation Act 2013: we log the complaint, contact the person who wrote the review, give them a defined window to respond or agree to removal, act on the outcome, and keep a dated record of each step. You will be told what happened.
Nova is not a medical service and does not give medical advice. Nothing on this site is a recommendation about your treatment. Published success rates are the regulator’s own figures, shown with their source and year.