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Tag Archives: Reputation

5 Strategies for Protecting Your Professional Reputation Online

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5 Strategies for protecting your professional reputation online

Reputation management has never been more important for medical professionals. All the rules of a doctor’s pre-Internet reputation apply, and there are some new things to think about, too. In fact, a properly managed professional reputation online is one of the cornerstones of a solid growth plan for a 21st century doctor’s office—your online presence involves a whole lot more than your own website, and patients are looking everywhere.

Here are five ways you should be managing your online reputation. The work doesn’t end with these, but they’re a solid start to get you and your practice on the way to healthy growth.

1. Claim Your Profiles on “Find a Doctor” Sites and Directories Across the Web

There are dozens of sites out there that patients use to find, evaluate, and contact physicians, and a few like ZocDoc and HealthGrades are essential for a growing practice. There are even more business-listing sites and services, including Google’s own business listing service and an array of third-party sites. If you’re practicing medicine in your own office or clinic, chances are you have a profile on these sites whether or not you know it.

The first step in online reputation management is claiming your profile on all of the “find a doctor” and business-listing sites. If you don’t claim it, you can’t control the information presented, and much of what gets posted is bound to be inaccurate. Take control of your profiles, and you have more control over your medical practice itself.

2. Update Your Physician and Doctor’s Office Profiles Regularly

Now that your profiles are claimed, you need to make sure they all have accurate information about your medical office’s location, hours, contact info, etc. You should regularly update your profiles any time there’s a change, and make sure any personal physician profiles you claim or create are properly linked to your practice’s listing, if you’re using a different business name for your office or clinic (e.g. Dr. Mark E. Pruzansky needs to make sure his profile is consistent with the HandSport Surgery Institute).

You can find, claim, and update your profiles manually if you want, but there are software options that can make it much easier. With literally hundreds of different places on the web where you might be listed, the software option tends to be a major time and cost-saver in the long run.

3. Keep a Constant Eye On Your Medical Practice Profiles

That software will come in handy again when it comes to monitoring your online profiles. You should get a notification any time someone else makes a change to your profile, such as adding a review or comment, asking a question, “flagging” you for any reason, or if changes are made by the site hosting your profile. This gives you the opportunity to quickly step in and correct any inaccurate information, answer any questions, and respond to any comments/reviews in a prompt and professional manner.

Again, you want to control the information that’s posted about you online as much as you can, and monitoring your physician and medical practice profiles will go a long way towards making that a reality.

4. Let Your Patients Know That Their Opinion Matters

Your waiting room area(s) should have tasteful signage or other collateral reminding patients that what they say online truly matters to your business. For example, Dr. Brian Zelasko let’s patients know where they can place reviews and join discussions, and shows them that sharing their positive experiences online will actually help you make the practice better (and of course, encourage patients to speak to you or someone in your office immediately if they have a negative experience—those are actually great opportunity to turn a disgruntled patient into a lifelong evangelist).

5. Have an In-Office Staff member In Charge of Solicitation

Don’t stop with in-office signage. Develop a plan for following up with patients to make sure they were pleased with the service they received, and to encourage them to share their experiences online. An email a day or two after a visit to your office, postcards offering free flu shots with a reminder to rate you on HealthGrades, even a follow-up phone call when appropriate can improve your patients’ perception and motivate them to say so in public, where it matters most to your practice.

Putting a specific point-person in charge of this will free up your time and make sure it actually gets done because the best of plans is useless if it isn’t consciously carried out. Sort of like your medical practice’s online reputation…

Are you managing your practice’s online presence? Tell me about your experiences in the comments below.

— This post 5 Strategies for Protecting Your Professional Reputation Online was written by Garrett Smith and first appeared on Capture Billing. Capture Billing is a medical billing company helping medical practices get their insurance claims paid faster, easier and with less stress allowing doctors to focus on their patients.

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Online Reputation Management and Patient Acquisition Go Hand In Hand

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Online Reputation Management and Patient Acquisition

Online Reputation Management and Patient Acquisition

Online Reputation Management and Patient Acquisition Go Hand In Hand

Reputation management has always been vital for healthcare professionals. Bedside manner, patient word of mouth, and reputation among your colleagues all factor into your medical practice’s growth. Building the career, business, and practice you want has always meant building and maintaining a positive reputation.

It’s no different in the Digital Age.

Your online reputation doesn’t always go hand in hand with your real-life patients’ perception, though. Offline, your reputation grows as a direct result of the care you provide to patients in your office. Online, your reputation can take on a life of its own due to the multitude of outlets patients now have to rate, review and discuss the care you provide. That’s why you need to reach out and take control of your online reputation, or it might end up controlling your practice.

 

Patients Don’t Just Rely On Word-Of-Mouth Anymore

Patients talk. They always have, and they always will. If your patients love the medical care and the personal attention you provide, you can bet their friends and family are going to hear about it—and if they have a negative experience, they’ll be talking about that, too. These days, though, many of those conversations will happen on social media instead of in person, with more than a third of people in the US saying they already use social media to gather healthcare information.

Today’s patients also go a whole lot further than simply asking their friends for doctor recommendations. Those recommendations are just starting points for the research patients do via search engines and healthcare-oriented websites. Before they contact your office, they’re likely to look for other reviews, to learn more about your background and your medical practice, and to see if your online profiles provide a sense of transparency and help build trust. An online reputation that helps build trust helps you acquire more patients, plain and simple.

It makes perfect sense, too, whether you’re selecting a doctor, a restaurant, or an auto mechanic. Given the choice of three providers, all recommended by friends, would you choose the one with a shaky online reputation, the one with limited online presence, or the one with plenty of available information and outstanding reviews?

In fact, a study conducted by Michael Luca of Harvard Business School found that earning one extra star on Yelp led to a 5-9% revenue boost. For healthcare professionals, ensuring you have a strong profile with a positive rating not only on Yelp but on sites like Healthgrades and ZocDoc can be a major boost to your practice. Ensuring that your profiles and your reputation on these sites reflects how you want patients to view you and your medical practice is an essential part of modern patient acquisition.

 

Search Engines Like Highly-Rated Medical Offices, Too

The benefits of actively managing your online reputation don’t end with direct patient acquisition. Not only are you more likely to compare favorably to other doctors with a strong online reputation, but you’re more likely to be found in the first place.

Google and other search engines read the web just like patients. Well, not just like patients, but they use a set of algorithms to determine which doctor offices and specialists patients are most likely to engage with. Those algorithms examine the same things patients examine—how complete your online profiles are, your reviews and ratings, how many other reputable healthcare sites point back to your doctor’s office website, and what people are saying about you online.

All of that information determines which medical practices, clinics, and hospitals are shown at the top of search results, and which are relegated to the search result pages no one ever sees (it depends on who you ask, but fewer than 10% of patients will ever go past the first page of search results—that’s the first ten results!). So managing your online reputation not only ensures you have a better chance of acquiring new patients when they look you up, it also means you have a better chance of patients learning about you when they don’t have a referral.

 

Manage Your Reputation, Grow Your Practice

The choice is pretty clear. Take an active hand in managing your online reputation, and growing your practice will be a whole lot easier. Let your reputation management lag, and your waiting room will empty out while your revenue dwindles. We think healthy growth is the better option, don’t you?

What are you currently doing in your medical practice? Leave me your thoughts below.

 

— This post Online Reputation Management and Patient Acquisition Go Hand In Hand was written by Garrett Smith and first appeared on Capture Billing. Capture Billing is a medical billing company helping medical practices get their insurance claims paid faster, easier and with less stress allowing doctors to focus on their patients.

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