The Client

Launched in 1971, Wilmington, North Carolina-based Wilmington Health is the largest private, fully integrated, multi-specialty medical group practice in their area. Wilmington Health offers a wide range of services and specialties, including primary care, urgent care, and surgical care.

Switching Tactics As Needed

In a competitive healthcare market, Wilmington Health needed to increase both the quality and quantity of online patient reviews in order to rank higher in online searches, stand out from other local practices, and improve the quality of care for patients.

Wilmington Health had used other reputation management solutions in the past, but grew frustrated with their inability to integrate and sync with other internal tools and software already in place, especially its electronic health record system. Lacking automation, the medical group’s process for capturing reviews was handing patients a physical card in person following their visit, and asking them to leave a Google review.

This strategy was immediately impacted by the COVID-19 pandemic; cards were not printed or handed out as often due to fear of germ transmission and concerns for paper waste.

“We quickly had to find an automated solution that would help us effectively and fairly showcase our providers and our locations,” says Desirae Hrynko, Marketing Manager at Wilmington Health.

The medical group audited Reputation against some of its competitors, ultimately launching a partnership with Reputation in January 2022, driven primarily due to Reputation’s experience in healthcare.

Garnering More Reviews

Wilmington Health began its partnership with Reputation by utilizing the platform’s Reviews and Review Booster features to drive higher review volumes and raise search ranking in local markets. Thanks to RepConnect integrations, the medical group was also able to merge the company’s own scripting into the Reputation platform so that patients see Wilmington Health’s specific messaging at different touchpoints across their journey, all of which has paid off substantially.

“We’re now ranking as a leader in the market thanks to our enhanced review volumes, which makes us more visible,” says Hrynko. “And most importantly, our providers’ reputation in our community is fairly illustrated in the online review space.”

Using Insights to Improve Outlier Data

The Reputation platform also provided Wilmington Health with useful site and provider-specific insights, which the company was able to use to identify providers and facilities that weren’t meeting performance targets.

“Our goal was to be more competitive, and Reputation has helped us identify specific providers and rooftops that were unjustly underperforming, due to not all of our patients being equally solicited for review feedback,” says Hrynko. “We want everyone to be rated 4.0 or above, and this gives us a good sense of how we match up with our competitors and where we can improve.”

Once Wilmington Health reaches that 4.0 goal, however, the medical group does not intend to rest on its laurels.

“Our goals will not stop there, as we will strive to continue to improve ratings with a ‘someday goal’ of being closer to 5.0 as well,” says Hrynko. “Ultimately, this is all centered around our goal of providing quality care and the best patient experience for those that we serve. Reputation has allowed us to garner all feedback received to continually strive for the highest quality in care.”

Assisting in this is Wilmington Health’s performance data transparency. The provider group shares its Reputation data across the entire practice so that everyone at Wilmington Health can see what all comprises the score as well as targets for improvement — which has helped generate engagement and buy-in from the frontline up to the C-suite.

In addition to their formal CAHPS surveying, Wilmington Health also actively engages patients via real-time surveying to quickly identify areas of improvement and better understand the patient experience. Since starting with Reputation in April 2022, overall patient sentiment has continued to rise, which the Wilmington Health team attributes to near real-time service recovery. With Reputation’s integration capabilities, Wilmington Health is able to automate review requests from their EHR to drive new online ratings and reviews through a text message patients receive following a visit. The team also noted that when running review requesting campaigns, the patient experience team saw no impact on CAHPS survey capture.

Additionally, with Reputation’s automated review requesting, Wilmington Health also actively has the ability to automate feedback to them, driving new online ratings and reviews through a text message patients receive following a visit. 

What’s Next?

By leveraging Reputation to place more focus on acquiring and analyzing patient feedback, Wilmington Health has been able to raise the review scores of its providers and facilities across the organization. But the provider group isn’t stopping there and has instead decided to set some lofty goals.

“Reputation helps us plan our moves and tailor our approach to different provider groups and service lines within the business because it isn’t a one-size-fits-all thing.” says Hrynko.

Desirae shared updates with the team in December 2023 that “Every listing was over 4 stars by this goal date, the only ones that did not hit that were sites that are hosted by a 3rd party group and not integrated with their CRM. However, 2024 holds promise for substantial enhancements, thanks to collaborative efforts and our dedicated focus on elevating the patient experience.” Desirae says. 

Over the past year, Wilmington Health has not only maintained but significantly amplified its dedication to excellence. They are thrilled to report an impressive 45 additional locations have joined the prestigious 800 Club, marking a remarkable 43% year-over-year increase from the 104 locations honored in the previous year. As they continue to raise the bar for healthcare standards, the organization looks forward to an even more prosperous year ahead.