Would you ever eat a meal from a restaurant with bad reviews? Or what about visiting a hotel with no reviews at all? So then why do you expect patients to not judge your medical practice based on online reviews? This is the reason why your medical practice needs to focus on patient reviews online.

Introduction

One star or five stars. From where we eat, to our cab driver, to our groceries, and even our underwear. Today, there is a rating for everything. The proliferation of social media platforms and the dissemination of the internet has made the web a public forum where people can discuss everything. And what many are choosing to discuss is how they would rate business, products, and services that they have experienced.

While people solely used to rely on word of mouth before choosing what products, services, or experiences they had, today they have the reviews of billions of strangers available through the internet. This great shift in how consumers approach and interact with business has shifted how companies think about online reviews and ratings.

But what about the healthcare industry? While the healthcare industry has traditionally operated on the very back of word of mouth, customer evangelism, and goodwill marketing, how do online reviews affect the industry?

Well, let’s just say that if your medical practice is not paying attention to online reviews then your business could be losing out on a lot.

Online Reviews

Adults in the US increasingly use the internet for their every need and requirement today. And this extends to choosing which businesses they patronize. Most adults look at the businesses that offer the services they are interested in online to make their final selection. After all, if the majority of your day is being spent online then why would you not use online tools to search for businesses?

This selection is based on a variety of factors like convenience, online reputation, location but most importantly reviews and ratings. Reviews and ratings have the most weight when it comes to customers making their decisions choosing whether or not to support a business.

Why they matter for medical businesses

For the healthcare industry, this is even more true than in other industries. If you eat a bad meal, it’s most likely that it is a short-term poor experience. On the other hand, a bad experience in a healthcare setting can have major consequences. It’s not really a surprise that patients want to be completely assured of the treatment that they are going to receive. That’s where the power of social proof in the form of ratings and reviews comes in.

Just in case, you are wondering if this is just something we are making up we do have some statistics to back our claims up. Surveys have found that over 70 percent of patients use online reviews to make a choice about their healthcare provider. Of these, over 1/3rd used Google Reviews to make a choice about medical practice. Even more surprisingly, nearly 2/3rd of the respondents also stated that it is essential for providers to respond publicly to online patient reviews. With internet use only going to go up, more and more patients will make choices about their healthcare provider based on internet reviews.

It’s very easy to see why online reviews are so vital for the success of a healthcare practice. Bad reviews or even a lack of reviews can sink a medical practice even if it was doing everything else right.

But how can healthcare practices focus on patient reviews? While that would be an entire blog on its own we can still tell you some simple steps. Using simple email templates to encourage patient review of doctors for your practice can lead to more positive reviews, while simply addressing feedback can only mitigate the effect of any negative reviews.

Conclusion

With the world turning digital, everything has a ranking for better or worse. Patients today rely on online reviews and ratings more than ever when it comes to choosing their healthcare providers. If your medical practice is not trying to optimize its ratings on online platforms, then you are definitely losing out on attracting more patients to your business.

The healthcare industry has long understood the power of social proof and customer evangelism for growing a business. But despite that, they have not yet realized that today’s social proof and patient evangelism happens on the internet. Google reviews, Yelp ratings, and even social media mentions today form the base of the opinions of patients that are looking at your service online.

BraveLabs helps medical practices of all sizes optimize their reviews so that they can attract more patients with positive word of mouth and show better social proof. Contact us today if you want to grow your medical business through a positive brand build.