Physicians’ negative online reviews — fair or unfair — can scare away new patients. But practices don’t have to sit idly by and watch their revenue shrink.
Increasingly, they’re turning to
Not all of these systems are effective, according to physicians who’ve used them. Asking patients for reviews is still not fully accepted, either. Still, some apps have proved their worth, doctors say.
Karen Horton, MD, a plastic surgeon in San Francisco, California, has used an automated system for 3 years. Even though reviews from plastic surgery patients can be difficult to get, Dr. Horton said, she has accumulated 535, with an average rating of just under 5 stars on a 1- to 5-star scale.
Dr. Horton, who speaks on the topic, said unfair negative reviews are a problem that needs addressing.
“A bad review sometimes says more about the patient than the provider,” she said. “Patients can use online reviews to vent about some perceived misgiving.”
Automated requests can address this problem. “The best way to deal with negative reviews is to ask average patients to post reviews,” she said. “These patients are more likely to be positive, but they wouldn’t leave a review unless asked.”
How Automated Systems Work
A variety of vendors provide an automated review request process to practices and hospitals. DearDoc, Loyal Health, Rater8, and Simple Interact work with healthcare providers, while Birdeye, Reputation, and Thrive Management work with all businesses.
Typically, these vendors access the practice’s electronic health record to get patients’ contact information and the daily appointment schedule to know which patients to contact. Patients are contacted after their appointment and are given the opportunity to go directly to a review site and post.
Inviting patients digitally rather than in person may seem unwelcoming, but many people prefer it, said Fred Horton, president of AMGA consulting in Alexandria, Virginia, a subsidiary of the American Medical Group Association. (He is not related to Karen Horton.)
“People tend to be more honest and detailed when responding to an automated message than to a person,” Mr. Horton told this news organization. “And younger patients actually prefer digital communications.”
But Mike Coppola, vice president of AMGA consulting, isn’t keen about automation.
He said practices can instead assign staff to ask patients to post reviews or an office can use signage displaying a Quick Response (QR) code, a two-dimensional matrix often used in restaurants to access a menu. Patients who put their smartphone cameras over the code are taken directly to a review site.
Still, staff would still need to help each patient access the site to be as effective as automation, and a QR invitation may be ignored. Pat Pazmino, MD, a plastic surgeon in Miami, Florida, told this news organization his office displays QR codes for reviews, but “I’m not sure many patients really use them.”
Some automated systems can go too far. Dr. Pazmino said a vendor he hired several years ago contacted “every patient who had ever called my office. A lot of them were annoyed.”
He said the service generated only 20 or 30 reviews, and some were negative. He did not like that he was soliciting patients to make negative reviews. He canceled the service.