How to Get Online Reviews For Your Medical Practice

In today's age, online reviews are as important as they are beneficial. Online reviews can quickly add a level of trust and legitimacy to any business. The Medical field can particularly benefit from customers providing online feedback.

Doctors especially receive new patients from their current patients. Patients searching for a new doctor, whether if they're new to the area or searching for a new doctor following a negative experience with another doctor, will often seek out advice from family or friends for referrals. In fact, a study conducted by the American Osteopathic Association reported that nearly three-fourths of patients found a physician due to referrals from family and friends.

After receiving a new physician name, today's tech-savvy aware people will take to Google to perform a quick search on the suggested physician.

While the medical field comes with a level of sensitivity for patients, depending on the doctor or procedure, patients that genuinely had a wonderful experience will be happy and willing to share their experiences. You can conduct a quick search and see for yourself that people do in fact leave detailed medically related reviews (plastic surgery, surgery centers, hospitals, and more). The growth of social media has aided in the variety of options/different platforms where customers and patients can share a review of their experiences.

Here are 4 tips to garner those online reviews:

1. Social Media Maintenance - There are several social media platforms to choose from. Reviews are not an option for every social media site, so Medical Practices should make sure to have a presence on sites where patients are able to leave reviews such as Facebook, Google My Business, Yelp, HealthGrades, Vitals.com, and ZocDoc (to name a few).  If you're not on any social media sites or medically related platforms, start with the above-listed sites first. While medical practices should be on a handful of well maintained social sites, physicians should be sure their social media manager thoughtfully curates and regularly posts content, photos, or videos on the aforementioned sites. 

Furthermore, Facebook, Google My Business, Yelp, and Healthgrades in particular aid in search engine optimization. Meaning when a potential patient googles your practice, those three sites would rank on the first displayed SERPS (search engine result pages). Once you create and verify your business online, your online visibility and rankings will dramatically change. To stress ownership, on Yelp where doctors are "reviewed like restaurants", your practice can be reviewed without you even verifying your business page, so be sure to be proactive and create or verify your page(s) as soon as possible. 

Additionally, depending on how much time your office staff has or if you have a social media manager, other sites that add to your legitimacy and digital reach include LinkedIn, YouTube, Bing Business, Twitter, Instagram, and Pinterest. However, it should be noted that each site has its own "personality" and type of audience that should be kept in mind when posting content. 

2. Make The Right Collateral - While the reviews your practice should be seeking are online, consider creating a variety of collateral to provide your patients to let them know to go online to check out your sites or remind them to please review. Marketing collateral such as a postcard thanking them for their recent visit and requesting a review (listing all of your practice's social media sites where they can like/follow/and review your practice) is a good start. You can also have signs in your waiting area or graphics that depict the practice's social media sites or have nurses in a post-op setting include the social media graphic in given materials.

Beyond print collateral consider making creative "review videos" that digitally showcase your reviews across a variety of platforms. You can upload your created review video on YouTube and share your video on Facebook, LinkedIn, your website, Instagram and more. Additionally, you can have the review video looping in your waiting room. Giving new and seasoned patients alike further confidence in your practice as they view your 5 star reviews from other patients. This also serves as a reminder to patients that your practice is on social media and that they too can review their experience. 

3. Follow Up - This is important for a variety of reasons. Beyond social media, Medical Practices should have some sort of customer relationship management tool or system that they can use to encourage reviews. This includes communication methods, such as semi-regular emails to patients beyond pertaining to appointments. 

Emails will be particularly helpful in efforts to keep negative reviews offline. Just as a glowing positive review can be the impetus for making an appointment, a scathing negative review can have the opposite effect and simply doesn't look good. In your CRM methods, incorporate workflows. Workflows are a series of emails that relate to a campaign or objective. Your first follow-up email can include a link to a yes or no question, such as "Would you recommend our practice to family or friends?". If the answer is "no", consider sending a link to a survey for patients to provide further feedback. Medical Practices are people based, so take heed for any suggestions and constructive feedback, and be sure to address it with your patients and if necessary your office.  For those that selected "yes" send them an email providing links to each social media site where they can share their positive experiences at your practice. 

Also to keep your practice relevant to your patients, be sure to send them Holiday emails or notifications of new posts on your practice blog so they continue to be engaged.

4. Make It An Important Part Of Your Practice - From office staff, nurses to the physicians, each one of the practice's personnel that a patient could interact with impacts the outcome of a review. Patient satisfaction and quality care should be at the heart of how a medical practice conducts itself.

Really, garnering reviews starts on the phone or the moment the patient walks through your office doors. Your office staff should be courteous and have the utmost level of customer service, they are a reflection of you. And if they're rude, people will post about it. And then there's you, your bedside manners are also crucial in helping your patient feel comfortable and confident they're in the right hands. A customer service mentality will help to seamlessly tie in requesting patient reviews. 

We hope you enjoyed our 4 tips for garnering online patient reviews? Have any questions or methods you'd like to share? Let us know in the comment section!