Online Review Management in the Healthcare Space
Reputation Staff Writer
What One Fortune 500 Healthcare Provider Did When Patients Were Looking Online and Walking Away
Online Reviews and Healthcare
People typically feel the most vulnerable during health crises. Whether an issue is affecting them or someone they hold most dear, all are trying to make the best decisions they can with the best information available. This is where the online review becomes a key component in the decision-making process.
Online reviews are a new — and highly relied-upon — data source. This feedback gives people fresh insight into medical facilities, care centers and providers — and it’s seen as unbiased and truthful because real people wrote it.
Research shows that an online review impacts patient decision-making.
According to a study published by the Journal of the American Medical Association:
| 93% | of healthcare website visitors stated that physician rating information was “very useful” or “somewhat useful” to their decision-making. |
| 97% | of healthcare website visitors stated that hospital rating information was “very useful” or “somewhat useful” to their decision-making. |
Source: Hanauer, D. A., MD, MS, Zheng, K., PhD, Singer, D., MPH, Achamyeleh, G., MS, Davis, M. M., MD, MAPP.
“Public Awareness, Perception, and Use of Online Physician Rating Sites”. Journal of the American Medial Association, February 2014.
“We Had to Do Something”
For one Fortune 500 health care provider, it quickly became clear that this online feedback had a big offline impact on its hundreds of care centers across the United States.
When the provider first consulted Reputation.com, it faced:
- Negative reviews, poor social media feedback — and evidence that this information was driving new business and patients away.
- Average loss of $3,000 to $50,000 in lifetime revenue per patient.
- Potentially losing one of their primary referral sources, a major hospital system.
- An average rating between 2 and 3 stars out of a possible 5 stars.
It was clear that this healthcare provider needed a technology platform to help:
Understand the big picture, across dozens of medical and mainstream review sites and physical locations
Identify the common themes that emerged from patient feedback
Get more genuine reviews from more patients to ensure an accurate online reputation
“Exactly What We Needed”
Reputation.com worked closely with the healthcare provider to customize its cloud-based Reputation.com for Healthcare platform and helped answer their most pressing questions.
“What do people think of us?”
It’s impossible to get that 50,000-foot perspective if you don’t have the data in one place — so we aggregated thousands of patient reviews across dozens of medical and mainstream review sites, covering all locations across the U.S.
When we put the healthcare enterprise’s reviews in one convenient online location, we made it possible for more than 500 hospital employees to sort and analyze feedback by site, region or at the provider level.
Our customized reporting tools helped them discover trends over time in volume, sentiment, and star rating.
“How can we be more responsive?”
Our system offered this customer instant alerting when new feedback was posted, driving faster identification of significant issues and real-time responses.
“What are the common themes across reviews?”
The healthcare provider was motivated to enhance patient experience and improve admission rates. But they were flying blind without the ability to understand emerging themes from online reviews.
We provided a patented sentiment analysis tool that identified common issues and concerns. That way, the organization could target the biggest problem areas for immediate resolution and impact.
“How can we get more reviews from real patients?”
The Fortune 500 healthcare provider serves a unique older patient profile. Like many of the patient demographics we serve, most did not proactively leave an online review — or understand just how important reviews of their experiences were to the provider.
We implemented a patient responsiveness campaign on the customer’s behalf, to explain why reviews mattered to the provider and asked them to share their experiences on relevant review sites.
“The Results Are Clear”
Since the healthcare provider and Reputation.com started their work together two years ago, every metric has improved — substantially:
Sentiment analysis reveals that online comments — once short and negative — are now paragraphs, long and glowing.
The healthcare provider was inspired to take this one step further with a new values program, emphasizing: kindness, accountability, exceptional care, and respect.
The provider’s leadership believed that by embedding these values in company culture and promoting them with employees, the quality of patient care, admissions rates, and profit would increase, and the provider’s online reputation would markedly improve.
As the metrics show, they were right.
For more information about these results or Reputation.com, call:
1-800-REPUTATION.