Executive Summary

In an era where so many organizations thrive — or don’t — because of how they are perceived online, it’s more important than ever to manage customer experience across the customer journey. Nowhere is this more critical than in healthcare environments, where the customer — the patient — is often physically vulnerable and where emotions run high. Arguably, this sets a higher standard for the healthcare customer’s experience than, say, a retail or hospitality customer’s experience.

Because of this — and because today’s healthcare customers find providers online and rely on information in online reviews and social media to inform their decisions — maintaining a stellar online reputation is essential. Health systems and providers that neglect their online reputation will struggle to compete with others that proactively and consistently manage their reputation and subsequently show up higher in search rankings with more positive reviews.

In order to stay relevant and win in this increasingly competitive landscape, healthcare organizations need to optimize every element of their digital strategy. Getting found online, being chosen for care, and improving patient experience based on customer feedback are critical elements of this strategy, all of which can be effectively monitored and measured using reputation management methodologies.

Reputation.com’s 2019 Healthcare Reputation Report can be used by health systems and providers to uncover actionable insights that determine online reputation. It will also make the case for investing in reputation management as a key element of an organization’s digital and patient experience strategy.

Most importantly, data in the report shows a direct correlation between online reputation and financial performance.

Specifically, this report covers:

• The relationship between online ratings and revenue per bed
• Trends in patient reviews and comments
• Ratings for the Top 100 hospitals based on customer experience

Armed with this information, health systems are better positioned to manage and address their online reputations, analyze patient feedback to improve operations and processes, and increase revenue per bed.

How We Analyzed Healthcare Reputation

Reputation.com applied artificial intelligence, machine learning and sentiment analysis to unstructured text in reviews of 4,800 hospitals that report revenue annually to the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS). From that sample, we included 3,824 hospitals with 10 or more online reviews on Google or Facebook between January 1, 2016 and August 31, 2018. Hospital ratings are not available on Healthgrades.

In an effort to understand the role that online reviews play in today’s digital health environment, Reputation.com looked at the relationship between online reputation and revenue based on 2016 data (the most complete data available from CMS). We calculated revenue per bed by taking publicly reported inpatient and outpatient revenue and dividing it by the number of beds.

We tiered Reputation Score as low, medium and high: Low comprises the bottom 25 percent, medium comprises the middle 50 percent and high comprises the top 25 percent.

What’s Your Reputation Score?

Measured on a scale of one to 1,000, Reputation Score is a comprehensive index of a company’s digital presence and in-person patient experience. It is calculated based on factors that include overall review sentiment, volume, recency, spread across review sites, social media sentiment, business listings accuracy and other factors that unambiguously reflect consumers’ opinions about their patient experience, online and onsite. Reputation Score is the most comprehensive measure of a hospital’s, clinic’s or healthcare provider’s reputation with consumers.

The Nine Components of Reputation Score

Direct Relationship Between Reputation Score and Revenue

A Strong Online Reputation = Higher Revenue

Looking at hospital online reputation and hospital financial performance, we found a direct relationship between Reputation Score and revenue. In fact, results of our research show that hospitals with a high Reputation Score have a 29 percent higher revenue per bed than those with a low Reputation Score.

Specifically, hospitals with a Reputation Score in the top 25 percent have a revenue per bed that is $1.2 million higher than hospitals with a Reputation Score in the bottom 25 percent.

Key Findings

The following tables show leading hospitals ranked by Reputation Score. Highlights include:

• Duncan Regional Hospital, Inc. has the highest average Reputation Score
• Patient experience begins before anyone walks in the door. Consumers want a good experience, from awareness to the final bill
• Use of the top five review sites continues to grow (Google, Home pages, Apple, Facebook, Bing)
• Hospital reviews on Google grew an incredible 86% from 2016 to 2018 — establishing it as the preferred platform for leaving hospital reviews.
• “Staff” shows up as the main category in both the leader and laggard hospitals, underscoring the importance of understanding the sentiment and trends in the reviews

Trends That Shape Your Reputation

Patient Experience Begins Before Anyone Walks in the Door

Consumers want a good experience, from awareness to the final bill. How a patient finds a provider online is a key part of the patient journey that should not be under-emphasized. A consumer’s ability to easily find and assess a provider online is the beginning of a great patient experience.

Google is dominating the search landscape in healthcare. It is the top vehicle used for the healthcare listings that consumers use to find organizations and providers. After Google, there are four other sources consumers turn to for healthcare listings: hospital and health system websites, Apple, Facebook, and Bing. Along with Google, these sites comprise 89 percent of all searches for healthcare providers.

It’s worth noting that healthcare specialty sites are becoming less and less of a source of information and stopping point for consumers looking for a provider.

Consumers Are Sharing Their Experiences, Good and Bad

Not only are patients looking for information for healthcare services and providers on Google, but they are also using Google to leave reviews.

Online reviews are increasing in number, as consumers become more comfortable and familiar with recounting online their personal experiences with products and services. Healthcare is no exception, perhaps because anything impacting health and wallets elicits particularly strong emotions.

Healthcare providers must develop strategies for communicating with patients where they are talking. Addressing very public reviews immediately proves a high level of commitment to patient experience.

While not all reviews are negative (patients do heap praise for particularly good experiences), the number of negative comments — centering mostly on billing issues, wait times and outcomes — hovers consistently around 40 percent. This is significantly higher than other industries. For example, our research on apartment management firms shows negative reviews hover at around 14 percent.

Recurring Keywords in Online Reviews Show Where Hospitals Excel, Fall Short
Online reviews yield a wealth of insight into what hospitals and healthcare systems are doing well and where they must improve. For example, positive online reviews seem to be heavily influenced by the kindness of healthcare workers and the level of information exchange between patients and their doctors and staff. Comments about highly rated hospitals are focused on compassion and communication.

Maintaining a Healthy Online Reputation

Final Thoughts

Patient experience is a predictor of success for hospitals and healthcare providers. With the prolific use of social media and online review sites, the patient journey starts at the first search for a provider and continues through to post-care when patients leave reviews. It’s critical that healthcare organizations develop and pursue reputation management strategies to improve patient experience.

The following are three best practices for those focused on achieving a better online reputation:

Maintain your Reputation Score.
Research reveals that 88 percent of healthcare consumers begin their search for a provider online. What they find there determines which hospital and doctors they choose. Remember that Reputation Score is determined by every touchpoint a patient has with a health system — from location and provider listings, to star ratings, to doctor profiles on a website. Your Reputation Score supports the management of each touchpoint effectively, and tracks success along the way.

Focus on Google.
Patient experience starts when a patient looks for a doctor or hospital online, and Google is the number one place being used to find healthcare information. Combine that with the huge increase in online reviews on Google and you see how important a focus on Google is to a healthcare organization’s digital strategy.

Leverage reviews to inform service recovery efforts.
Long wait times or problems with billing are especially frustrating for patients, but have nothing to do with clinical quality or patient care. Issues like these can frequently be fixed by making operational adjustments, and will have a huge impact on patient experience — if you know about them in time. Real-time alerts to negative reviews gives you the power to resolve a situation and give patients the experience they want. Power exists not just in understanding challenges, but also in being alerted to challenges in real time so that they can be resolved quickly.