More patients today read online reviews before choosing a healthcare provider than ever before. A 2020 report by Software Advice found that 71% of surveyed patients use online reviews as the first step to search for a new provider.
Positive reviews are a great first step, but in order to amass 5-star reviews, medical practitioners must have a well-designed patient feedback system in place. Patient feedback helps medical practices enhance the quality of service, identify the issues and other gaps in care, increase patient engagement, and ultimately drive revenue.
But how do patient reviews lead to all these enhancements?
Patient reviews are the backbone of your practice’s reputation.
Patient reviews are essential in every medical practice. In addition to driving patients to your practice, positive online reviews help prospective patients to trust your practice. On the other hand, negative reviews are sometimes the reason that people don’t choose your practice.
Let’s explore five reasons why patient reviews are necessary for your practice:
1. Enhance Online Reputation
In today’s tough competition against other healthcare providers, managing your online reputation is necessary if you want your practice to stand out. Not only do patients leave ratings and feedback, but they make referrals on social media and tell their friends and families about how long they waited, how they were treated by you and your staff, and whether or not they felt that you were trustworthy and knowledgeable.
With a proper patient feedback system in place such as the automated patient feedback service offered by Curogram, you can monitor patient satisfaction and ask happy patients to provide an online review. Additionally, you can identify unhappy patients and resolve issues that could lead to negative reviews.
2. Boost Patient Engagement
Listening to your patients and showing them their feedback matters when you want to improve patient engagement in your practice. Offering quick and easy opportunities to provide feedback can help enhance patient engagement, which is a critical factor in increasing patient retention and improving health outcomes.
Many of your patients will not speak upfront — even if you have some outspoken patients — which makes asking for patient feedback even more important. Patient review or feedback helps providers understand what the patients want and it drives continuous innovation towards more patient-centered care.
3. Enhance Quality Care
Asking for your patients’ feedback about every part of your service from appointment scheduling to the doctor’s bedside manner will help you determine which areas you need to improve on.
With thoroughness, proper communication skills, and professionalism, you can completely see the quality of care your patients are receiving versus what you perceive you’re providing.
Additionally, health outcomes ultimately improve when your patients have a great experience with the services that you provide. Based on the study from the Journal of Patient Experience, higher star ratings were associated with lower in-hospital complications and readmission rates.
4. Reduce Patient Attrition
One of the best ways to identify issues and gaps that might be hurting your revenue and patient retention in your practice is by asking for patient reviews or feedback.
With Curogram’s automated patient satisfactions surveys, you begin by asking about how happy they are with your service. Based on their responses, you can drill down to more specific questions that can help you identify and address issues with:
- Patient care
- Communication
- Appointment booking
- Intake processes
- Billing
- Patient portals
Patient reviews can also help you identify trends and understand whether issues are happening more or less and which patient populations are most affected.
5. Establish Trust and Credibility
It’s good if your patients leave 5-star ratings for your practice, but to gain additional insight, it’s better to understand the motivation behind their reviews. Patient reviews establish a practice’s credibility and create a line of trust between you and the prospective patients. Taking their feedback into account and implementing positive changes in your practice can help develop trust with your patients.
People spend significant time online to decide who is worth their trust, so having negative patient reviews could severely impact whether or not you are chosen as a healthcare provider.
Let Curogram help manage your medical practice’s online reputation.
Asking for patient reviews can greatly benefit your medical practice. By gathering and displaying these reviews, you give your practice and online presence more credibility. Collecting positive reviews increases your website’s SEO, and you strengthen your online reputation.
Curogram is an easy-to-use HIPAA-compliant online messaging software that can help you gather ratings and surveys by automating the process. You can send your patients simple one-line text surveys to identify your happy patients, so they can rate you with 5-stars in one click.
Customers using Curogram’s simple survey and rating system are getting 5-10 Five-Star reviews per month. You will also be notified of unhappy patients immediately so you can prevent that hard-to-reverse bad review. Curogram helps healthcare providers take the complexity out of managing a brand’s online reputation.