Fast-Track Your Healthcare Business Past Competitors By Properly Managing Your Reviews

By Collin Homes, Chatmeter Founder and CEO

Sixty-two percent of patients consider online reviews important or very important when making a choice in the healthcare sector. Reviews are extremely influential when you consider that each time a patient decides to come to your office, there is a very good chance they read your reviews before making their decision. Now that the internet is becoming such an important place for acquiring clients in the healthcare sector, physicians need to understand what practices they can and cannot use when interacting with current and potential patients over the internet. Make sure you aren't caught in the dark by understanding what the best practices are for interacting with patients online.

How Has The Internet Influenced The Way Patients Find Physicians?

As a physician, your online activity will be much more impactful to your reputation than in other sectors. The public might see a physician’s online behavior as a proxy for in-person behavior. If you’re not responding to reviews, they may think you are too busy or don’t care enough about your patients which could influence them to select another provider. Now that patients are turning to digital resources such as local search, ratings and reviews to find the most trusted healthcare providers in their area, there is more scrutiny towards what physicians are posting.

With the tremendous changes going on in healthcare, consumers are becoming more empowered and having more choices than ever. They’re applying the same behavior as shopping for all other local products and services. Whether buying direct or through their insurance company, there are plenty of choices. Thus, after narrowing down to a list of options, they’re searching directly for doctor’s names and reviews online to make decisions. This is forcing the industry to engage and make sure every doctor has an online presence and reputation.

It is now your job to create content and manage your reputation online in order to maximize your visibility and increase the likelihood of patients calling. If done correctly, your office will excel in attracting new patients all while being considerate of current patient privacy regulations.

Navigating The Online Space

This landscape of using online channels to acquire and engage with patients can seem difficult to navigate as it is relatively new to the healthcare industry. Here are a few of the best and worst practices you need to know in order to properly optimize for the healthcare industry.

Healthcare Pitfalls

1. Manage who can post and then monitor what is posted. Because patient privacy is such an integral part of a physician’s practice, your office needs to be aware of everything they choose to post online. That’s nearly impossible to do manually but there are many great solutions for review management platforms. Chatmeter and Reputation.com are a few providers specializing in Healthcare. It’s important to always have multiple employees checking on your profiles because anyone in your office could post something that could accidentally violate HIPAA regulations. Healthcare is almost always a private matter which means if you’re interacting with patients over the internet, you need to be conscious of who else can see what you say and do. A good guideline to use is the Mayo Clinic’s Social Media Guidelines as a template for your offices employees.
2. Be careful when interacting with patient reviews - Responding to negative reviews and comments about your business can be tricky. We suggest replying to the comment in a general way without acknowledging that the reviewer was a patient of your practice. Remember to keep it brief and invite the conversation offline. Here’s an example of good and bad.
   
   Critique: “I had to wait three hours to be seen, and when I finally got into the examination room, Dr. X was rude and impatient.”
   
   Legal/Correct response: “When scheduling patients, it is our policy to adjust the time with the doctor as necessary for that patient’s particular needs to keep our schedule on track. As a result of emergency situations, it is possible for us to be behind schedule from time to time. If you would like to talk with our management, we would be happy to talk to you more about the issue. Please give us a call at (555) 555-5555”
   
   Illegal/Wrong Response: “Karen, We apologize that we you had to wait so long for your allergy shots. Please try us again.”

The Legal Response does not acknowledge that the original poster was a patient, but it does allow the doctor or the medical practice to give the public another perspective and the general treatment philosophy without any specifics of a particular patient. The Bad Response acknowledges that you treated the patient, and acknowledging something as small as allergy shots is a violation and could get you in trouble.

How To Get Started

1. Make sure you are listed on all important sites- Your business needs to pay attention to all popular review sites. Yelp has become one of the most popular sites for the healthcare sector. Even though only 6 percent of Yelps reviews are in the healthcare sector, that still means that out of Yelp’s 127 million reviews, 7.62 million of those reviews are within the health sector. It doesn’t stop there. Other sites such as ZocDocs, WebMD, and Healthgrades also have an extensive patient review base. That’s all quality information!
2. Make sure you have completely accurate business info- Having consistent NAP information (name, address, phone number), as well as website and office hours, is one of the most important things your practice can do. Remember, the consistency of your NAP info directly influences your rankings. What does this mean? Inconsistent info will worsen your rankings and diminish your online presence. Avoid this by making sure all your businesses information is accurate and consistent across all sites.
3. Make sure you have meaningful content- Content is the main source of attracting and engaging with patients. It is crucial that your business has good, professional photos of you and your team as patients want to get to know you before they come in. It is also important that you tell your patients to share their positive experiences online. (Need to mention that you should list all the services that you provide!) A review management platform can help you request those reviews and instantly publish them on your site.
4. Get a monitoring tool- Review management platforms like Chatmeter.com and Reputation.com can help you easily manage and respond to all your reviews and responses from one convenient location. This expedites your process allowing you to focus on what to say to each review rather than wasting time trying to find all your reviews.
5. Create guidelines for posting and responding and enforce strictly- Even though patient reviews and interaction are incredibly important to your business's reputation, your practice has to be aware of violating any Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act (HIPAA) laws or giving away personal information about a patient. Even if a patient of yours decides to disclose personal information online, you are still prevented from doing so without that patient’s consent. This means, even if the patient writes what they were being treated for, you still cannot respond to details about the treatment. Interacting with patients online has to be done with precision as to be compliant with the HIPAA laws. Here are some more ways to help you navigate responding to patients online.

Now that we have shared some key insights on how to properly manage reputation for the healthcare sector, it’s your job to implement them in the right way. If you are unsure where to start or want to take your optimization practice to the next level, check out more information about review management platforms. Companies like Chatmeter and Reputation.com can give your business a detailed overview of their platform where they can show you the weak points of your business and how you can improve on them.

About The Author
Collin Holmes, founder and CEO, started Chatmeter in August, 2009. Prior to Chatmeter, Mr. Holmes was VP of Product Management and Marketing at V-Enable (now xAD). His extensive experience in the local search industry, both online and mobile, provides a solid foundation for the direction of the company. He has worked in leadership roles at several other startup companies and held other notable positions in product and marketing roles at Akamai Technologies and AT&T Wireless. He earned his MBA from San Diego State University and a BA from UC Riverside.