Sutter Health: Healthcare CX Success Story
reviews were responded to in 2017 alone. More than all reviews responded to in the previous 13 years combined.
listing accuracy from 57% accuracy prior to Reputation
increase in page visits to Doctor’s profile pages from Google after implementing Reputation.
Review templates created to help respond to reviews with speed and legal compliance.
Sutter Health Sees 76% Increase in Doctor Profile Page Visits with Reputation
California-based Sutter Health is the eighth-largest non-profit healthcare organization in the United States. Stretching across 22 counties, Sutter Health’s network encompasses hospitals, urgent care and walk-in care clinics, and hundreds of labs, imaging centers and outpatient clinics. Due to growth through numerous acquisitions, Sutter Health was facing several digital marketing challenges. This prompted Nolan Perry, Head of Reputation and Engagement at Sutter Health, to look for a partner to help ensure the health system’s online reputation reflects its brand.
Challenge
According to Perry, incomplete and inconsistent location and physician listings were the first challenge to tackle.
“Our location listings were all over the place,” says Perry. “Because Sutter Health has been around for so long and has grown largely by acquiring different medical groups, hospitals and systems, no one was managing the listings data.”
In addition, no one was responding to the health system’s patient reviews or social posts.
“Sutter as a whole receives thousands of reviews every month,” says Perry. “In 2017 alone, we received over 9,000 reviews, and for the most part, no one was responding to them or using that information for anything. We understood the importance of online reviews as a ranking factor for search engines, but there were no policies or processes in place to hold people accountable.”
Sutter’s goals in implementing a reputation management program were primarily about improving patient experience.
Reviews received in 2017 alone, which were largely unresponded to.
Patient experience isn’t just about the in-office visit. It takes place throughout many touchpoints with our brand — including those experienced online. People expect continued interaction with our brand outside of the office, hospital or clinic environment — and we want that as well, because it helps us develop a loyal relationship with patients that can last throughout their lifetime.”
Nolan PerryHead of Reputation and Engagement at Sutter Health
Solution
Perry was referred to Reputation by colleagues and compared the platform against three other competitors. “Reputation emerged as really the only platform that could offer a complete solution,” Perry says.
Perry’s team uses Reputation for managing and maintaining physician and location listings, as well as monitoring and responding to online reviews.
“Responding to reviews provides a great opportunity to interact with patients and gain insights into how to improve customer experience,” Perry says. “Our chief marketing officer is a huge proponent of taking action on patient feedback to gain operational insights for the business.”
In addition to business listings and review management, Perry’s team also streams star ratings to Sutter Health’s website on doctors’ profile pages.
“Generating star ratings through the Reputation platform provides patients and prospects more transparency into the quality of care we provide, and drives greater consumer visibility online for our doctors because they’re ranking higher,” Perry says.
Results
Reputation is helping Sutter Health improve patient experience by enabling the organization and its doctors to tune into what patients are saying and respond accordingly.
“In 2017, we were able to respond to over 5,000 reviews, which is more than the system has responded to in the last 13 years combined,” says Shaun Ralson, Regional Marketing Manager at Sutter Health.
Reviews responded to in 2017.
Reputation offers built-in natural language processing that automatically tags reviews and comments with specific categories so Perry’s team can generate meaningful reports for their different geographies. For example, he can pull a report showing the number of mentions — both positive and negative — of wait times for a single clinic and provide feedback to the location.
Listings Improvements Boost Click-Through Rates and Accuracy
Sutter Health’s location listings accuracy has increased from less than 57% to nearly 90%, which in turn has had a measurable impact on attracting patients.
Listings Accuracy without Reputation
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Listings Accuracy with Reputation
“Reputation is definitely driving more views and visits across our locations,” Perry says. “We’ve already seen a 76% increase in page visits to doctors’ profile pages from Google. People are clicking through and booking appointments with our doctors because they’re ranking higher in search and displaying better star ratings.”
HIPAA Made Easier
Reputation helps to ensure Sutter Health’s review responses are HIPAA compliant, which is critically important in healthcare. “We had to convince our legal team that it was going to be okay if we started responding to patients online,” Perry says.
“They wanted to know those responding to reviews would not violate HIPAA regulations or put the company at risk.”
By using the Reputation platform, Perry’s team was able to craft more than 50 template responses for responding to reviews, helping to improve efficiency while remaining compliant with U.S. laws.
“The ability to use templates helped us get buy-in from our legal team and our risk management team, so we could start responding,” Perry says.
Complete Platform Provides Competitive Advantage
Reputation offers competitive advantages for Sutter Health because it helps the Sutter team manage their organization’s reputation as a whole.
Prior to our partnership with Reputation, we didn’t have a single place where we could view our online reputation across all of our medical practices and facilities, across our different geographic regions. The platform is really powerful because it allows us to filter that view down to the local level, so when we speak with individual CEOs, the information is more meaningful to them.”
Nolan Perry Head of Reputation and Engagement at Sutter Health
Sutter’s partnership with Reputation provides an invaluable source of knowledge to draw from as the health system explores how to optimize its online reputation and improve patient experience.
“This is all brand new for us, and we’re building a foundation for how Sutter Health represents itself on the web now and into the future,” says Perry.