Key Takeaways
- Seventy-two percent of patients read online reviews before booking an appointment.
- A 5-star reputation is a lagging indicator of a practice’s clinical and operational excellence.
- The key performance indicators for reputation management healthcare leaders should follow include star ratings, number of reviews, and words used to describe patient experience.
Let’s face it. Healthcare is a lot more competitive than it was a decade ago—and the world wide web is the undisputed arena where providers tussle for patient loyalty. Hence, if you run a medical practice in the modern market, you’ll need a system in place for managing the new currency of reputation: online reviews.
The previous statement isn’t mere conjecture. One report discovered that 72% of patients read online reviews before booking an appointment. Furthermore, it found an impressive 80% of respondents deemed providers with five or more reviews more trustworthy.
Without actively managing your reputation, you leave your online image in the hands of individuals most likely to take the time to post public feedback on their own—who, in today’s world, are usually those with the most negative feedback. We have all felt the sting of a one-star review.
So how do you manage your reputation methodically? What are the measures for reputation management healthcare providers should follow once practice clinical and workflow operations are optimized? What are the measures you should follow? Why is this important?
Let’s look at the last question first, “Why is managing your reputation important?”
Why Is Medical Reputation Management Important?
Your reputation is a direct reflection of everything you do day in and day out for your patients. It’s your brand’s essence externalized for public view. Truly, it is your only asset that has durable and monetizable value. Unfortunately, word-of-mouth reputation-building that we had come to rely on in prior years has been superseded by reviews on Google, Healthgrades, or Vitals. We can no longer just leave it to random referrals.
So, we then have to face a distinct truth one layer deeper. There are no 2-,3-, or 4-star reviews.
Understanding this fact, the first problem you have to tackle is minimizing 1-star reviews. Then, the next problem to solve is amplifying 5-star reviews. Put simply, a positive patient encounter usually warrants a 5-star review.
Minimizing 1-Star Reviews Methodically
Here’s the good news. The underlying reasons for 1-star reviews in medical reputation management are relatively consistent, identifiable, and addressable. That is, you have the control to solve them. Most complaints are outside of the clinical encounter. They’re usually related to scheduling, billing, or front-desk experience. Patients often feel disrespected or are left frustrated by processes that are not transparent or unreasonable. Left with no verbal recourse, they turn to social media for their pound of flesh.
Instituting efficient, fair, and patient-centric billing, scheduling, and front-desk processes are beyond the scope of this post. But understanding them as systemic and root causes of patient complaints is imperative for course-correction.
Let’s take scheduling. Is it easy for individuals to book an appointment? Is the phone answered promptly without unnecessary waiting times or holds? Is registration easy and automated? Are patients asked to fill out a bevy of forms with duplicative information?
We can ask a slew of helpful questions for billing, too. Is patient responsibility explained clearly and simply in the financial policy? Are the final charge, allowable, and insurance payment communicated simply, clearly, and promptly?
Patient experience after entering your doors must also be convenient and friction-free. When individuals check in for their appointments, is there easy and automated check-in through an app, kiosk, or portal before the patient arrives? Are people greeted courteously and promptly when they check in?
Finally, there is no panacea for poor medical care. However, ensuring that there is enough time and space to handle patient problems and questions during the encounter will help minimize reasons for disappointing clinical reviews. Patients who feel that their concerns weren’t acknowledged or felt rushed during their visits will have negative perceptions of the encounter—even if advice and guidance was clinically sound.
Establishing Automated Internal Feedback Loops
Wouldn’t it be helpful to know what patients will say first before asking them to review your practice? Fortunately, you can with automated online surveys.
When you think all of the root causes of patient dissatisfaction have been removed and your business and clinical systems are sufficiently optimized, it’s time to get internal feedback. Although a paper survey asking patients what they think or a suggestion box is a quick, old fashioned way of keeping a pulse on patient experience, we live in the digital age. With simple, automated tools that can be connected to the encounter, you can ask for patients’ reviews and comments so you know exactly where you stand.
Sharing this unfiltered information with your office staff provides them with an unvarnished reflection of how your patients view them. When given this information, employees often self-correct systemic or individual issues. No medical professional starts their day hoping to be viewed poorly by the patients they wake up to serve. You can institute a simple star system with an opportunity for free-form comments similar to online reviews, or you can ask a more specific “Net Promoter Score” question to your patients after the encounter.
Importantly, internal surveys should be paired with a method to report the results to clinicians and staff on a regular basis. Positive feedback has an uplifting effect and negative feedback leads to self-correction. Together, this information removes the physician or practice owner from bearing the burden of bad news or the obligation of figuring out a solution.
Amplifying the Reputation of a 5-Star Performing Practice
Now that you’ve optimized your processes and have a good understanding of what patients will say about you and your practice, how do you enable a system where individuals can easily leave a review? Put simply, if the patient had a great encounter and it’s easy for them to leave a good review, they will. Consistently and reliably. It’s not random, it’s not magic, but it does depend on a well-planned system that considers the following:
- Timing matters. Patients are less likely to leave a review with every minute that passes after they’ve left the four walls of your facility. Therefore, the method of communicating the review request matters. SMS has a timeliness that email doesn’t, and 95% of texts are opened and responded to within three minutes of receiving them. While neither channel is mutually exclusive, envision a patient receiving an SMS soon after check-out and leaving a review within a matter of minutes.
- Ease matters. If the review requires a registration or authentication event before leaving the review, it’s simply too inconvenient. Google Reviews are easy to leave on a mobile device if you remain persistently logged in under your Google profile. Thus, it’s important to leave out extra steps sure to thwart positive feedback.
- Don’t over-engineer. Patients will naturally leave a good review if they’ve had a positive experience. No need to ask for the 5-star review explicitly or place undue pressure on them. Just providing the opportunity for feedback without asking for the review or a high star rating will yield the best result. It also maintains the professionalism required of an effective physician and medical practice—a core aspect of cultivating a top-notch reputation.
The 3 Indices of Effective Reputation Management for Doctors
You’ve established the right system. You’re getting 5-star reviews regularly. Now what? It’s time to measure success.
And you will only need to look at the key indices of a 5-star reputation:
- Star rating for the past month and the lifetime of the practice. This tells you how your practice is performing and, more importantly, how your patients perceive you and your organization.
- Number of reviews. Volume matters for several reasons. A single bad review will be buffered by a high volume of bad reviews. In fact, patients who have negative experiences will go out of their way to leave a bad review, whereas a person with a positive experience will more often need to be encouraged to leave feedback. The next reason that volume matters is that it bolsters credibility. Which is more credible as a reflection of performance: a practice with a 4.9-star rating from three reviews or a practice with a 4.9-star rating from 300 reviews?
- Comments. This is best expressed as a word cloud. Positive descriptors are repeated frequently and amplified (e.g., “professional,” “kind,” “courteous,” “the best.”). This holds true with negative reviews as well (e.g., “waiting time,” “unclean,” “money.”).
Set the Right Foundation for an Outstanding Reputation
With these three indices, you can manage your practice reputation with guardrails. That is, you can observe high performance while only having to take decisive action if you go off the tracks. Present the results back to your practice monthly to promote excellent performance and correct subpar outcomes. Alternatively, if you have a team member who underperforms consistently, it becomes much easier to hold them accountable. Established properly, a well-constructed medical reputation management system will become self-managing and help keep your practice at the top of its game.
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