How You Can Manage Patient Feedback to Elevate Your Online Presence & Reputation
For your healthcare organization, online reputation management is a key factor in growth and patient retention. Today, the era of in-office feedback and word-of-mouth recommendations has evolved into a digital world where patients share their experiences across multiple platforms. Everything about your practice’s patient experience is on display for all to see, easily accessible with the click of a button.
This widespread availability, along with high premiums and out-of-pocket costs, has culminated in the patient-as-consumer shift. It serves patients well, giving them much-needed agency and empowering them to choose the right provider to fit their needs. But while this shift has benefitted patients, it’s made your industry far more competitive.
Your patients may have the final say in your business’s reputation and online presence, but you can make their feedback work to your advantage. Here’s how to leverage your online ratings and reviews so you can elevate your online reputation management and grow your business.
Monitor Your Profile Listings
First, your online profile listings are like a virtual front door to your healthcare practice.
Since most of your patients rely on the internet to research and select healthcare providers, it’s more important than ever to maintain accurate, up-to-date, and compelling profile listings. Along with showcasing your business’s information, they also contain the valuable reviews your patients seek. At a glance, patients will see whether your practice can give them the care they need.
In fact, 76% of consumers look for a business’s online presence before visiting in-person. Your profile listings raise your visibility, giving patients the upfront information they want.
For instance, Google—the top-ranking search engine—is one of the first listings you should create and maintain. A Google Business Profile with detailed, updated, and easily accessible information is essential to higher visibility. Likewise, personal touches (i.e., photos, posts, and branding) can make the right impression.
Other listing sites to note:
- Bing
- Apple Maps
- Healthgrades
- Vitals
- Yelp
- RateMDs
- WebMD
With profile listings, you can showcase your practice’s unique attributes, from the expertise of your physicians to the range of services and specialized care you offer.
By investing time and effort into crafting engaging profile listings, you can ensure that your practice stands out to patients. Plus, they can help solidify your reputation as a provider of choice in your community.
Keep An Eye on Multiple Review Sites
With multiple profiles, it can be daunting to respond to and manage what everyone’s saying about you online. Logging into your profiles separately to sift through hundreds of reviews is not only time-consuming, but it’s risky for your reputation. If you miss a bad review that’s been up for weeks, you’ll fail to address the issue and come off as careless to patients. Similarly, even failing to respond to a glowing review shows a lack of engagement.
With PatientTrak, you can monitor review sites in a far less stressful—and risky—way:
- Access physician and location reviews in one dashboard.
- Get automatic alerts when negative reviews are posted for immediate intervention.
- View detailed monthly trend reporting across all physicians, groups, and locations.
- Benchmark data across to compare patient satisfaction with other providers.
- Compare your reviews with internal surveys for thorough insight into your practice’s performance.
Having everything about your reviews in one location gives you more control over what’s said about your practice online. From a single dashboard, you can quickly intercept negative commentary, promote what’s positive, and build a solid reputation. This way, you’ll have a much easier time attracting patients and staff.
Collect Actionable Feedback with Patient Surveys
When it comes to online reputation management, there’s nothing more straightforward than asking your patients directly if you’re up to their standards. By surveying your patients, you can address root issues before they’re amplified online. Plus, considering that just one bad review can spoil the value of 40 positive patient experiences, it’s a good idea to listen to what they have to say.
Plus, it’s worth noting that patients will appreciate that you care about their experiences. That, in and of itself, can be rewarding for your reputation.
To gather feedback, you can send Hospital CAHPS (Consumer Assessment of Healthcare Providers and Systems) surveys to measure key areas. Each year, more than 4,000 hospitals participate with more than 3 million survey participants. Collectively, the responses provide meaningful insight into what matters to patients. With the data gathered, these surveys unveil the ideal patient experience and highlight gaps in the care you provide.
Likewise, you should send a survey to gather patients’ opinions about your clinic’s performance. PatientTrak enables your practice to send custom, automated surveys in real time via text or email. This allows you to collect information about your office specifically and answer specific questions that may not have been covered in the CAHPS.
Once you have your survey results, you can use them to gauge your reputation. In PatientTrak’s monthly reputation report, you get a side-by-side comparison of your internal surveys and what your patients post online. Then, you’ll have an accurate, transparent view of how your clinic is doing.
Send Automated Review Requests for a Higher Google Ranking
Without patient reviews, online reputation management is an impossibility. A small number of patient reviews online limits your visibility, obscuring your business behind competitors that seem more popular than you. When 60% of your patients check Google reviews online before their visits, they’re essential to your growth strategy.
To the point, a study conducted by the Journal of the American Medical Association (JAMA) outlines exactly how much your patients trust reviews:
- 93% of healthcare website visitors stated a physician’s rating was either “very useful” or “somewhat useful” to their decision-making.
- 60% of participants felt online ratings were important to their decision to choose the provider.
- 37% answered that they avoided doctors with negative reviews.
Not to mention, your business’s search engine optimization (SEO) and Google ranking depends on your quantity of positive reviews. That’s because Google’s algorithm interprets a business with a large number of customer appraisals as more relevant. So, to rank higher in search results, you need as many of them as you can get.
The easiest way to get more patients to rave about your clinic online is to automate review requests. With a system like PatientTrak, you can automatically prompt patients to leave a post-appointment review. Since it connects with your EHR and PMS, you can text or email requests without manually reaching out to patients to ask for online ratings.
In fact, providers using PatientTrak have seen up to a 329% increase in review volume—underlining how much easier it is to get more patient reviews with automated requests.
Showcase Transparency & Broadcast Your Patient Feedback
In addition to online review and internal survey requests, another way to convey to patients that you value their feedback is to broadcast it on your website. By broadcasting your ratings, you’ll demonstrate a commitment to transparency and a willingness to listen. This, in turn, can help solidify your reputation as a provider who genuinely cares.
To broadcast feedback on your website, you can use PatientTrak to publish your patient satisfaction and CAHPS survey results according to pre-defined criteria. These results are transferred to your website as star ratings and testimonials that can be published on your “About the Doctor” page.
As another benefit, publishing patients’ survey results on your website raises your online visibility. They appear in Google’s search results, improving your SEO and driving more traffic to your web pages.
Harness the Power of Patient Feedback & Boost Online Reputation Management with PatientTrak
In today’s digitally connected world, patient feedback—both internal and online—can make or break your online presence and reputation. It’s up to you to leverage it for the better. By proactively managing your online profiles, engaging with reviews, and embracing transparency, you can pave the way for growth and trust within your community.
PatientTrak’s comprehensive platform empowers you to take control of patient feedback, streamline the management of reviews, and enhance overall patient satisfaction. With a unique system, you’ll have access to all major review sites, survey tools, and social media reviews in one consolidated dashboard.
Harness the power of PatientTrak to elevate your online presence, improve review volume, and gain trust and loyalty within your patient community. Don’t let your reputation be an afterthought—take charge with PatientTrak and witness your healthcare organization thrive.
References
76% of Consumers Look at Online Presence Before Physically Visiting a Business. (2021, April 20). https://www.prnewswire.com/news-releases/76-of-consumers-look-at-online-presence-before-physically-visiting-a-business-301272462.html
Featuring Online Customer Reviews: A Guide for Platforms. (2022, January). Federal Trade Commission. https://www.ftc.gov/business-guidance/resources/featuring-online-customer-reviews-guide-platforms
Gingiss, D. (2019, July 9). Why Treating Patients As Consumers Can Improve The Healthcare Experience. Forbes. https://www.forbes.com/sites/dangingiss/2019/07/09/why-treating-patients-as-consumers-can-improve-the-healthcare-experience/?sh=574a2f3e63a1
Patient Satisfaction Surveys: How to Build Practice Reputation. (2022, March 7). PatientTrak. https://www.patienttrak.net/news/why-patient-satisfaction-surveys/
Taking Control of Patient Feedback. (n.d.). PatientTrak. Retrieved May 3, 2023, from https://martech.health/uploads/curriculum-vitae/patienttrak-108010.pdf