Internet Reviews of Doctors: What Patients Are Saying About You Online

Posted by Peter McEllhenney on 21 June 2011 | 0 Comments

Tags: What Patients Want

20% of all internet users look at ratings and reviews of doctors on the web according to the “Social Life of Health Information” from the Pew Internet & American Life Project.

So good online reviews are important to building your medical practice. And they are becoming more important as search engines like Google display more reviews and star-rankings on their results pages.

So what makes you a “good doctor” according to today’s patients?

Clinical expertise and the ability to solve health problems are important. But excellent interpersonal skills and first-rate customer service are more important still.

Again and again in online reviews people post, they talk about how they “like” and “trust” and “feel comfortable with” their physician. They describe how their doctor “listens” to them and “takes the time to answer their questions.”

Patients talk about how “friendly” the staff is and how “clean” and “comfortable” they find the office. They talk about how their doctor calls them back when they telephone. And they talk about how long they had to wait.

Doctor rating websites also think interpersonal skills and customer service are what your patients care about most.

Two of the largest doctor review sites are vitals.com and healthgrades.com. These two sites ask users to rate doctors on a range of characteristics, and most of them are related to personal communication or customer service.

Here are the rating topics on vitals.com (on a scale of 1 to 5 stars):

• Ease in getting an appointment
• Waiting time during a visit
• Courtesy and professionalism of office staff
• Accuracy in diagnosing a problem
• Bedside manner (caring)
• Spending enough time with me
• Following up as needed after my visit
• How long was your wait at the office? 00 minutes

Here are the rating topics on healthgrades.com (on a scale of 1 to 5 stars):

• Recommend to a Friend
• Level of Trust
• Helps Patients Understand Their Condition
• Listens and Answers Questions
• Time Spent with Patient
• Scheduling Appointments
• Office Environment
• Office Friendliness
• Wait Time 00 minutes

You shouldn’t encourage or solicit reviews from your patients, although you can add “Follow us on…” elements to your website with links to sites that contains reviews of your practice.

You also can’t control what people say about you on the internet. Some review sites allow you to register your medical practice with them and will help you communicate with a person who has posted a negative comment. Remember that most people don’t expect doctors, or anyone, to do their job perfectly all the time. They do want to be heard, however. Responding to a complaint constructively is often enough to make an unhappy patient happy again.

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