The Internet Has Changed Everything

The internet has fundamentally altered how patients search for healthcare providers and medical facilities. Historically a patient was provided with a list of approved physicians and hospitals that were in-network to a health insurance plan. This list was usually updated annually and sent to participants of an insurance plan. Then a patient selected a participating doctor from the list and made contact with the provider by telephone. The internet has changed all of that and reputation and reviews are often the deciding factors.

Crowdsourcing provider selection

In today’s marketplace, prospective patients for healthcare providers are using the internet to choose healthcare providers. A potential patient will gather information on the doctor or facility by searching for the provider online and looking for reviews and comments. Reviews from previous and current patients become a great referral source.

The Amazon effect

This new paradigm of physician selection is very similar to how a consumer interacts with the Amazon rating system. When a consumer is considering the purchase of a new product on Amazon, the consumer will evaluate the purchase by checking the reviews of the product. What has been the marketplace’s experience with the product? Four stars? More? Less? What is the quantity of reviews being considered? Ten? Hundreds? More? This review system provides a quick index and calculation of value and benefits using a straightforward metric measured in stars. Five stars is good. One star is bad.

Reputation management

As a result of this new method of vetting providers, healthcare professionals must now actively manage online reputation. This process is very simple. Unfortunately, an unhappy patient is much more likely to post a negative review online than a satisfied patient. However, the irony is that there are excellent ratings to be harvested from current patients. The only thing a healthcare provider needs to do is ask patients for a review. This proactive tactic almost always results in numerous 5-star reviews that the physician or medical facility would not have received without asking.

The law of large numbers

By actively asking patients that are pleased with a service, the net effect is that the occasional dissatisfied customer with a bad review will be drowned out by all of the positive feedback. Ten 5-star reviews will negate one 2-star review because of averaging. A prospective patient will consider the single outlier with a negative review as the exception and believe the majority of the 5-star reviewers. Multiply this by hundreds of reviews and the small percentage of negative reviews become almost imperceptible and wholly invalidated.

Google owns the space

The bottom line regarding online reputation management is that a prospective patient will most likely be viewing Google My Business review engine results to check online reviews for a provider. The reason is simply that the user is more likely to be using Google for search results. Google will automatically provide the Google My Business review results in the right column of the search page. This rectangle is known as a knowledge card. The best practice is for the provider to focus efforts on getting positive reviews posted to Google My Business. Google owns the reputation management space.