Doctor reviews and what to do when you get them
- When getting a new patient, it is often secondary to recommendation by patients in their network. It’s the same for social media except that it is not word-of-mouth but word of mouth on steroids.
- Here is an example of rating sites which include doctors in the United States:
- Yelp
- Healthgrades
- Vitals
- Zocdoc
- Webmd
- Doctors can’t avoid getting reviews, good ones as well as bad ones – even though there is often nothing to say on their professionalism.
What do do when you get a bad review ? : the 3 R’s
- Reach out:
- confidentiality protection: don’t give details regarding name, diagnosis and in general any information that could be used against you in a court of law.
- say you are sorry about the bad experience…Give him a contact and an invitation to contact. Here it shows that you care, but it doesn’t acknowledge anything – except for fo the bad experience. Doctors who care are held more into consideration by patients.
- Redact: try to remove the bad review
- either by contacting the website. Difficult to do without legal ground. No business wants a bad review, but there is no reason to do it for a doctor and not a restaurant…so good luck !
- make the person who made the complaint to take out the review. (see “Reach out”)
- Repair
- patients do not always know what makes a good doctor…and doctors need to know that to improve their ratings over time.
- Patients rate you based on what they feel.
- TIP: patients regard service as a marker of quality…such as time queues. They don’t necessarily pay attention to all the objective factors that really make a good doctor.
Avoid fake reviews: not only is buying positive reviews from specialized companies and patients unethical…but it can actually be broadcast when it is discovered, and ruin one’s reputation.
Contributors
Dr Christophe Hsu – dermatologist. Geneva, Switzerland
Source of information: 2014 (03) – Benabio J, Help, I’ve been Yelped! Managing your online reputation. 72nd AAD (American Academy of Dermatology) Annual Meeting (Denver, CO, United States of America)
