Seven Steps To Better Online Doctor Reviews

 

Tips for managing a physician’s online reputation

Can a patient use the Internet to pick a doctor the same way she picks a hotel or a restaurant? A lot of people must think so.

The popularity of rate-your-doctor websites such as ZocDoc, Healthgrades.com and Yelp.com is exploding, judging by the growing number of reviews of doctors on those sites.

These days many people are reluctant to try a new dining or lodging establishment or to order a book on Amazon without perusing the online reviews of prior customers. The same thing is increasingly true for doctor shopping. As a result, more physicians than ever are focused on their online reputations.

Thanks to the Internet, even a good doctor can easily get a bad rap (or rep) from time to time.  What can you do about unfair patient reviews? Lots of things, starting with how the phone in your office is answered.

Here are seven basic principles in managing online physician reviews:

1. Claim your identity on rate-your-doctor websites

Just about all rate-your-doctor and business-review websites allow individual physicians to register with the site. Most require a valid office address and phone number for the practice, plus verification of the doctor’s medical license number and date of birth, or similar.

Claiming the doctor’s identity typically allows him or her to respond either publicly or privately to an online review on the same website. It also permits posting special practice information and even photos and videos in some cases.

However, almost never can the physician remove a negative review entirely. That would defeat the whole purpose of these websites.

2. Respond to all online complainers

In public relations, silence to criticism implies guilt or indifference or both. Don’t just sit there. Use your newly claimed identity to respond to an unhappy patient.

Make your response public, if possible. The unhappy patient is not your only audience. Really, the more important audience is prospective patients reading the negative review. They need to see that you take customer service seriously.

3. Discuss general policies, not individual cases

A public website is obviously no place to talk about one person’s health conditions and care. The good news: the vast majority of patient complaints – according to a recent survey by Vanguard – are about customer service and doctors’ bedside manner. These are frequently the easiest kinds of critiques to address.

In most cases, simply say something in your online response along the lines of, “The experience you describe is not what we strive for at our practice. Our goal is to have each patient see a provider within 15 minutes of arrival….”

Then offer the name and phone number of a responsible staff member at the practice and ask the complainer to reach out to the staffer to discuss. Or, if you can accurately identify the complainer as a bona fide patient, call him or her directly and try to resolve the issues.

4. Don’t let HIPAA fears paralyze you

There are ways to comply with privacy laws and still address patients’ complaints both publicly and privately. That’s why in your public response it’s important to stick to comments about the practice’s general policies.

Even if a reviewer’s complaints do involve his or her medical treatment, at least publicly offer the option of discussing the grievance privately with a practice representative. Often, all anyone else needs to see is that you’re responsive to customer complaints.

5. Build the number of positive online reviews

There are several ways to do this. One is to contact happy patients who send thank-you notes to the doctor or practice and ask if they would share their comments publicly on certain websites.

Another is to have an aggressive patient-feedback program. Many practices offer online satisfaction surveys after each appointment for this purpose. This helps head off some problems before they garner public attention.

(NOTE: Vanguard has a sophisticated computer system that scores its online surveys and thus helps identify the happiest and the most unhappiest patients for special handling.)

6. Accept the inevitability of complaints

Face it – if you’re in business of any kind for more than a month, chances are that you’ll end up with an unhappy customer sooner or later. It’s not the end of the world. Do the best you can minimizing criticisms and maximizing public praise, and your practice’s reputation will eventually grow.

7. Make customer service top priority

We’ve saved the best advice for last. Perhaps as much as three-quarters of patient complaints can be addressed with preventive measures.

Too many practices focus nearly exclusively on clinical skills and insufficiently on customer service. The little things such as good phone manners and looking patients in the eye when speaking with them make all the difference.

Check this space again soon for more about building a customer-service culture in a medical practice.