Marketing Your Practice With Review Sites

How to Use ThemTo Your Advantage

Do You… Have a Practice website? Monitor physician reviews for your doctors? If yes, what do you do when you get a negative

review? Use review sites to review doctors that you refer to

or to learn about physicians who you might consider joining your practice?

Do Your Physicians… Hate Review sites and feel that quality patients don’t

use them? Feel that only low income patients use the review

sites?

Why Do You & Your Doctors Need To Care About Review Sites?

Over 80% of Internet users search online for health information, and 1/5th of their searches are about a specific provider.

41% of patients have read someone else’s commentary or experience about health or medical issues on an online news group, website or blog

60% of patients active online say using the web affected a medical decision

27% of the 65+ age group uses online reviews The likelihood to use online reviews also increases as income

increases. And those in urban areas are more likely to use online reviews

than those in suburban or rural areas.

SOURCE: Software Advice Survey 2013

http://www.softwareadvice.com/medical/industryview/how-patients-use-online-reviews/

2013 Research Study 4500 Patients - Key Findings Healthgrades is the most popular online

review site, but Yelp is the most trusted. Patients are most likely to use online

reviews as a first step in finding a new doctor.

Patients using online reviews are primarily seeking information related to the accuracy of diagnoses physicians’ years of experience wait times

What Are Patients Doing With Their Online Reviews?

62 percent use online reviews as a first step to find a new doctor

19 percent use online reviews to validate the choice of a doctor they’ve tentatively selected before making an appointment

19 percent use online reviews to evaluate an existing doctor.

SOURCE: Software Advice Survey 2013, 4500 peoplehttp://www.softwareadvice.com/medical/industryview/how-patients-use-online-reviews/

Money Isn’t Always the Deciding Factor

Over a quarter (26%) of insured patients are willing to visit a doctor outside their insurance network if that doctor’s reviews are higher than those of an in-network doctor.

21%of males indicated they’d be willing to go out-of-network based on reviews

31% of females And the willingness to go out-of-network increases

with age. (35% of those 55+ are willing to go out of network

The higher the income bracket of a patient, the more likely he or she was to utilize online reviews. 30% make upwards of $75,000 23 %of those in the bottom income bracket reported

using them.

SOURCE: Software Advice Survey 2013, 4500 peoplehttp://www.softwareadvice.com/medical/industryview/how-patients-use-online-reviews/

Where Do People Post Reviews? 1. Vitals2. Ucompare HealthCare3. RateMDs4. Wellness5. Yelp6. Google+Local7. Insider Pages8. Kudzu9. Manta10. Merchant Circle11. Yahoo ! Local12. Yellow Pages

How Do These Sites Work You set-up a physician profile with the

site, most already have pulled data from other sources so you MUST confirm that all is correct and make sure that ALL content is as consistent as possible from one site to the next

Most use a 5 star rating system

How Are the Scores DeterminedUse an algorithm which calculating different factors like:

The average star rating Total volume (how many reviews have been given to that

particular location/person) The actual review- if someone goes into more detail vs.

someone who just rates it and gives like a 3-word description then rep.com gives more weight to the one that provided the details over the latter

If that review was posted on only one site or multiple sites How recent the review(s) are Competitors or other similar businesses in area Also the popularity of the site. For example Google and

Yahoo get more exposure than other lesser known sites like CitySearch

Reputation.com Use for all our employed physicians Use for our main hospital facilities Use for key service lines Get daily report of reviews by sentiment Get monthly summary report by each

Facility, Service Line, and/or Doctor and/or Practice

Act on negative comments immediately

Can view by type, location, individual doc…..

Not all reviewers are equal …NOTE: how many friends, note how many reviews they have done…their ‘reach’ is wide so

Same reviewer

If you can’t beat them, join them? Creating your own rating system , error here is that you assume that all people will look here first and not on the review sites, but it is one way to tackle this issue.

What Won’t Work Medical Justice (physician reputation

management service…attempted to: Create a patient agreement that ‘promised not

to post a review about the doctor’, in addition patients were to get extra privacy protection

Backfired, complaints filed with the Federal Trade Commission

Did 180 turn Now giving their client physicians ipads for

their patient reviews which they in turn post on review sites

Where Do You Start?Step 1 – Start With Google Places

Gather all your content Claim your location – Create your profile

listing hours, include photos, tell people what you do and what makes your practice unique

Fill in your profile https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hU1ZmV

FlW3A Using as much of the EXACT copy that you

used to set-up your Google Places profile here for the other review site profiles

Search for internal medicine doctors in Tucker, GAAll the ‘bubble’s with letters in them (AB, C…) are coming from Google Places,

Step 2 Get Listed On Top Review Sites

Vitals Ucompare HealthCare RateMDs - free Wellness Yelp Google Local

Remember…keep your profiles consistent, check your phone, address, zip etc..

Step 3 Promote Reviews Provide a small handout card to each

patient with the WWW address for each review site and ask them to please write a review of their visit

Step 4Monitor What Is Happening

Check the review sites daily if possible, minimum 2 times a week

Consider a system that will alert you about a positive, neutral and negative reviews

Prioritize and decide if you will… Reply to all negative reviews Reply to all neutral reviews Periodically thank your positive reviewers…

don’t ignore them!

Step 5 – Act on Other Things You Learn From Your Reviews Staffing issues Scheduling issues Process Issues Real life threatening errors

Tools To Make Review Tracking Easier Reputation.com Trackur. This tool will show you what people are seeing when they search for you in Google or any

social network. It also lets you know if the people talking about you are influential in the industry or not. Trial Time: There is a ten-day trial on any plan.

BrandsEye. This tool offers all of the basics of reputation management, but also offers competitive analysis and works great if you want several people in your office to work with the tool.Trial Time: There is a two-week free trial available.

 Brandwatch. This is one of the most popular tools to manage an online reputation. It works best for social media management and helps monitor certain keywords on these social sites.Trial Time: There is a free demo available.

Rankur. This is a good tool if you’re a small company, yet it still offers a lot of analytics and demographic information. It helps you see your online reviews, monitor your competitors, and is available in many different languages.Trial Time: There is a free plan available.

SocialMention. The greatest thing about this tool is the fact that it can send you alerts for all of your keywords. It also analyzes when your brand is mentioned and just how important those mentions actually are.Trial Time: Free tool.

Whos Talking. This tool works very similar to SocialMention because it can alert you when your keywords and your brand are mentioned. You can see mentions on almost all social media accounts as well as videos and images; however you can only look at one “type” of mention at a time.Trial Time: Free tool.

Google Alerts. This is probably the most basic form of reputation management, but it’s also the easiest. You simply add in the term you want to track (most likely your company name), and you will get emails telling you when and where that word was mentioned. It doesn’t do any type of analysis for you, but it gives you the facts.Trial Time: Free service.

Questions?