Online Patient Reviews: Don’t Disregard One Person’s Bad Experience!

You know the story — a physician is over-scheduled or has a disruption in their day, and a patient ends up waiting for a very long time. When she finally gets seen, the physician is rushing to make up for lost time, and speeds through their conversation.

Later that day, the patient writes a scathing review on Yelp.

In the past, online reviews were a way for patients to vent frustration — but they didn’t necessarily carry the weight they do today. With ever-increasing use of social media and more focus on healthcare consumerism, patients are now selecting their providers based on online reviews and perceptions.

Even the Washington Post has noted in a recent article how hospitals are putting greater emphasis on these reviews.  

My clients often ask questions on this topic:

• What can I do to improve online reviews?
• How can I make sure these negative reviews don’t cause patients to pick a different hospital?
• Should I set up a training program for my physicians after a certain number of negative reviews?

The first step is to consider why the patient was upset. There are two sides to every story, but often there’s quite a bit of truth to both sides. If the patient’s wait time was long, that would certainly contribute to a negative impression of the caregiver; add to that the rushed atmosphere of the visit, and that can certainly lead to an unhappy patient. On the other side of the coin, the provider is extremely busy with a full schedule of patients, creating a limited period of time to see them; add to that the relatively new burden of having to enter each patient’s data into the EMR, and it’s easy to see how things went south.

With new technologies comes the need for new, preemptive best practices for incorporating them into your workflow. By the same token, an approach needs to be made to address negative reviews after the damage has been done. A comprehensive patient experience plan should incorporate both of these tactics, and many more.

Questions you need to ask yourself to help prevent negative reviews include:

• Are your providers introducing themselves to patients, apologizing for the wait, and sitting down at eye level to the patient, providing them with their full attention at the beginning of the visit?
• Are they acknowledging the other family members or advocates in the room?
• Do they know how best to weave data entry into a 1:1 conversation?
• Are care instructions given orally, visually, with a “teach back” model, or none of the above?

In terms of dealing with negative reviews that have already occurred, ask yourself this question:

Do you have a member of staff who is alerted by negative comments and addresses and personally responds to each one, or do you find all of this too overwhelming?

Everyone in healthcare is overtaxed; it’s often easier to seek outside counsel to help achieve these goals. Negative reviews can cause real damage to your practice or your hospital, particularly in our new models of care and reimbursement. Getting ahead of the game is the most important thing you can do.

I recently spoke on this topic at the MUSE convention last month, presenting an educational session: Beyond Meaningful Use: Enhancing the Patient Experience with HIT. If you’d like to hear some hints and tips to enhance these initiatives, listen to the on-demand webcast: {{cta('2112d510-94b4-4935-bfd5-7b6d04d238d4','justifycenter')}}