Are You Using Reviews to Improve Your Practice?

Recently we’ve looked at intention, infrastructure, and innovation and how these are used to improve practice results. Intention is focused on staff interactions and provides the foundation for practice growth. Intention is also key in reputation management because a leader’s reputation within their practice must be positive before their external reputation can be enhanced. This week we’ll look at an important component of a practice infrastructure that requires innovation and that is reputation management. With 89%* of consumers checking reviews it’s important that they are managed proactively. For many of our new clients, improving their online reputation is a top priority. They’ve considered hiring a marketing company or even a staff member to manage their online reviews. Some believe that a financial investment can quickly improve their reputation. I explain that these may be necessary tools in the future but they are a premature reaction since improving a reputation requires changes in behaviors and processes.

I once visited a surgeon for my first post operative visit, a surgery that required a two-night hospital stay and eight months of PT. I waited 45 minutes for my first post-op visit. Once I was in the exam room, I shared my feedback with him and he apologized, but quickly blamed the scheduling department. I shared that I had visited other physicians who utilized the same scheduling system and that I had never waited more than 15 minutes. I commented that I had seen this feedback frequently mentioned in his online reviews and encouraged him to work with his staff to determine more appropriate appointment times for each visit type. We discussed that new patient visits require more time than follow-up visits and that his scheduling system should reflect this. For my next follow up and all subsequent follow ups, I never waited again and his online reputation has improved significantly, which is great because he is really an outstanding surgeon with an excellent beside manner.

Once you’ve updated practice processes to address patient’s concerns, you’re ready to collaborate with your staff to identify innovative ways to request reviews. Our clients encourage their staff to take advantage of the “compliment window.” This is the moment when a patient provides praise of the staff by phone or in person and is an opportune time to ask them to share their experience with other potential patients through an online review. With multiple sites, it’s hard to know where to focus but Google is always a great place to start.

Reading reviews to identify opportunities and understand the root cause requires that we look at reviews as a diagnostic tool that will help us to improve and not just as a necessary evil.

If you are ready to improve your online reputation and your practice results, contact me at smays@impactpracticeconsultants.com. *Brightlocal