Introduction

Over the last couple of years, healthcare marketers have become increasingly aware of the importance of online reputation. As more than 88% of healthcare consumers start their search for a provider online, and 80% read online reviews before they choose a provider, online reputation management (ORM) is now a priority initiative in leading health systems.

New trends in 2019 underscore the importance of ORM as a way to not only attract and acquire more patients, but to build trust with consumers and improve patient experience — from the initial online search to post-care.

These trends point to the growing mistrust among U.S. consumers and the not so surprising link between a healthcare organization’s reputation and the patient experience it delivers:

1. Building trust with healthcare consumers will be more critical than ever, requiring increased brand transparency and proactive engagement at the local level.
2. Online reputation and patient experience management will merge, as a health system’s brand’s reputation and the experience it provides to patients are inexorably linked.
3. Healthcare organizations will increasingly leverage AI and machine learning techniques to improve patient experience.

Let’s examine the ways in which healthcare organizations can use ORM strategies to adapt to changing consumer behavior and expectations that are inspiring these trends.

Healthcare Trends

1. Building trust with healthcare consumers will be more critical than ever, requiring increased brand transparency and proactive engagement at the local level.

In 2018, a growing distrust among consumers — spurred by the media and current political climate (think “fake news”), as well as numerous high-profile lapses of trustworthy behavior from companies such as Facebook, Under Armor and others, has created the demand for increased brand transparency. This applies not only to healthcare, but to nearly every industry, from retail to hospitality, financial services and more.

Because trust is waning, authenticity is crucial. Brands must be authentic, open and transparent.

Eighty-six percent of people — from Millennials to Gen-Xers to Baby Boomers — say authenticity is important when deciding what brands they like and support. This means publishing accurate physician and location data across the entire ecosystem where patients conduct “near me” searches for care. Manually updating an online directory with data provided by internal resources is no longer adequate — automation is necessary to keep up with myriad data sources consumers use to find your doctors and locations.

Build Trust through Authenticity

How does a healthcare organization demonstrate authenticity? It’s in the way they interact and engage with patients and consumers, both online and onsite.

Here are two good ways to react to this trend:

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2. Online reputation and patient experience management will merge, as a health system’s brand’s reputation and the experience it provides to patients are inexorably linked

Your brand’s reputation is defined by the patient experience you deliver. If a patient has a bad experience with one of your providers, that patient may leave a bad review or complain about it on a social media site, and tell their family and friends. Word spreads, and your reputation degades.

Use Feedback to Improve CX

Fortunately, effective ORM can enable you to turn a negative experience around and recruit brand advocates.

Here’s how:

An ORM platform collects and analyzes feedback at every patient touchpoint — before, during and after care is delivered. It delivers data to the provider about the interaction and what went wrong in real time. For large healthcare organizations with hundreds or even thousands of locations and providers, technology is essential to monitor and respond to reviews and social posts across the web in a timely manner. Choose a platform that has alerting and ticketing solutions built-in, so any issues that surface online initiate a process for addressing and fixing them.

3) Healthcare organizations will increasingly leverage AI and machine learning techniques to improve patient experience.

Historically, patient experience has been defined by CAHPS patient satisfaction surveys. But these surveys don’t provide a complete picture of patient experience, overlooking important parts of the patient journey like pre — and post — patient care experiences (i.e. parking, wait times, billing).

In 2019, healthcare organizations will complement this information with in-depth analysis of other types of patient feedback like organic online reviews. They’ll use artificial intelligence (AI) to mitigate customer service issues before they go viral and impact reputation.

Supplement CAHPS Data with Insights from Reviews and other Patient Feedback

Unstructured data from online reviews and social media posts offer invaluable insights into patient sentiment that CAHPS surveys don’t provide. It enables providers to be more proactive and responsive about potential problems and recurring complaints, before they have an impact on patient satisfaction survey scores. Analytics tools such as word clouds and competitive benchmarking can apply AI to that unstructured data to identify patterns or trends in patient feedback.

ORM platforms that offer analytics tools will help healthcare organizations leverage the power of AI to improve patient experience.

How Healthy is Your Online Reputation?

As consumers increasingly go online to research and find healthcare providers, your online reputation is more important than ever. And given the dynamic nature of consumer sentiment about brands, constant vigilance is critical to keeping your brand’s reputation healthy.