Effective strategies for requesting doctor reviews by patients

Did you know that 62% of patients consider positive online reviews to be an extremely or very important factor in their decision to choose a provider? Yet, 44% of patients report never being asked for a review. If you’re not requesting reviews, you’re missing valuable opportunities to have satisfied patients share their experiences — helping you establish credibility as a healthcare provider with prospective patients.

Patient reviews, doctor ratings, and patient feedback are critical components of reputation management. It's risky for a medical practice to leave them entirely to chance.

If you only have a few, old online reviews of your patients' healthcare experience, new patients may feel unsure about the legitimacy of your practice. It’s important your medical practice receive a constant stream of reviews to bring in new patients.

In this article, we'll look at how your practice can effectively inquire into patient satisfaction, request and obtain reviews, and share feedback with medical professionals and office staff to improve the patient experience.

To begin effectively soliciting and collecting patients' opinions after doctor visits, start with your clinicians and clerical staff.

Emphasize the importance of patient focus in this training. Also, encourage techniques for active listening. These include not interrupting, repeating back what the patient has said, and asking questions based on responses.

Give staff members some scripted questions they can ask following doctor visits:

Train the staff on how to accept patient complaints with grace and to pay special attention to them. Complaints can be of tremendous help in improving service.

The practice might establish a policy of a follow-up call from a medical practitioner. (This is also good for building the doctor-patient relationship.)

But if the comments are positive, encourage staff to ask the patient to review their doctor visits on sites such as Google, Facebook or WebMD (the big 3), as well as any doctor-rating platforms your practice uses. Make it easy to leave a patient evaluation by providing all of the information needed to participate.

You never want to incentivize a patient to provide healthcare ratings. However, there’s nothing wrong with recognizing staff members who put these practices into action. They can be incentivized based on the number of requests they make or the number of reviews they secure.

Requesting patient reviews can provide you with real-time feedback that can strengthen your patient relationships — and help you provide better care.

Considering that, according to BrightLocal, 87% of people also read online reviews of local businesses, it’s easy to see that praise from a satisfied patient can hold serious clout.

Patients’ expectations are evolving, and they expect their medical practitioners to be more consumer-focused. This is one reason it’s important to let patients know that feedback after their patient visits helps you improve your service.

Acknowledge them when they leave you patient opinions sooner rather than later. A quick “thank you” can go a long way toward building that relationship with your patients.

Five-star reviews are great, but don’t ignore negative reviews. Responding to less-than-flattering reviews of patient interactions can turn a negative into a positive. It also builds confidence in the patient that their opinion matters. This makes it more likely they will participate in the future.

Automated requests for doctor reviews by patients can seem very impersonal. People get similar requests from all directions, from local restaurants to Amazon vendors.

Artificial intelligence has improved the performance of these systems, helping to create a more personalized experience for patients. Some systems are customized for the healthcare industry. Staff members can let patients know that they’ll be receiving an email containing an online review form, asking for feedback on the service they received.

Many people will not take time to write a review of a healthcare professional. It's easier to respond to a short, simple form to provide doctor ratings.

Automated systems ease the pressure on you and your staff if you forget to request feedback or simply don't have the time to discuss their patient experience in person. An automated feedback request will ensure you have a steady stream of current online reviews. This helps you keep your online reputation in top shape through effective healthcare reputation management, without adding more work to your plate.

Learn how Tebra’s automated practice marketing tools give you stronger patient reviews, better visibility, and a simpler way to manage it all.