As your practice expands, you’ll need to keep in touch with patients to assure quality services, if not their dissatisfaction could end up online. By inviting, studying and responding to reviews, modern doctors ensure not only quality care—but their online reputation reflects the quality of care provided! Private Practice and its Online Reviews In 2019, your practice’s online reputation matters. According to PatientPop’s 2019 Patient Perspective survey report, 80 percent of practices consider online reputation for being essential to success. The way patients browse, assess, choose and stay with healthcare providers, more than ever, is derived from an intuitive marketing mix of digital outreach and retention strategies. According to the survey report mentioned above about 54.6 percent of patients browse a provider’s reviews before choosing a doctor. Another 69.9 percent consider a positive online reputation extremely or very important. In today’s competitive private practice environment, about three-fourths of prospective patients go online to seek medical care. Of these, 57.1 percent can be considered a constant “stream” of potential patients. Because the digital frontier is ever-expanding, so too is the resource pool of information available to prospective patients. Doctors intending to not only expand their practice—but scale it efficiently—need to treat their practice’s online presence with as much time and attention as their physical location. Do Perspectives Vary? Prospective patients indeed are varied, demographically, but experts have pinned down the most active online group: About 85 percent of patients who search online for healthcare providers are between ages 30 and 44. This group doesn’t only search for healthcare providers, either. They visit third-party websites, post reviews, read general medical information and contribute to their thoughts, ideas, opinions and other content across social. Online Reputation and Growth The way healthcare providers and clinicians respond to online reviews, particularly negative ones can result in patient satisfaction levels doubling! In fact, directly addressing negative feedback results in a 99 percent boost in satisfaction. Sadly, too many practices don’t realize this as 51.8 percent of patients are never contacted about negative feedback. When compared to the 59 percent of patients who consider online reviews to be essential to their online search, these statistics paint a picture of reputation necessity. Look at this way, if a provider responds to a negative review it has a 99 percent chance of doubling patient satisfaction, whereas no response at all will result in 100% chance of the patient staying “unsatisfied.” 57.1 Percent of Patients Consider Third-Party Websites to be a Primary Source An important part of any digital outreach program expands into the ways prospective clients use online tools. Perspective patient’s have a decision-making process based on formed opinions about a provider found primarily online, followed by recommendations from family and friends. Third-party websites offer online reviews from patients, as well as comprehensive information found across different websites. In conjunction with these third-party websites, a practice’s website can offer quite a bit of useful information. Patients are 22 Percent More Likely to Leave a Review if Asked Patient feedback usually is positive. If it isn’t, however, it might not exist at all. This feedback hurdle isn’t new, and will likely remain constant as the medical industry continues to evolve. Today, 52.1 percent of practices actively request feedback. Still, 45.5 percent of patients say they’ve received a feedback prompt. In essence: Asking for feedback is important. It’s vital, even, to a practice’s growth and success. When asked for feedback, patients are 22 percent more likely to offer a review. In your own practice, care-related reviews are just around the corner. Keep your patients satisfied, engage them digitally, and keep them connected once they leave the office.
