The most important marketing headlines in recent years for the healthcare industry is patient experience (PX). As competition in this lucrative market heats up, improving PX has become a primary focus for practitioners.

Survey Says…

Healthcare consumers have started to weigh in on everything from service, courtesy, hospitality, fee fairness and overall care quality on the web.

We surveyed 100 patients in the Montreal region and found the 7 out of 10 patients will regularly look up health care professionals, 9 out of 10 will look at potential new professionals and clinics they plan to attend.

Most health systems do not have a system to capture patient feedback from the web and integrate that data into a PX strategy. As consumer preferences change and choices increase, ORM has become an important tool to acquire and retain customers.

ORM for Healthcare clinics

Nowadays, patients are wielding a strong stick on the web. There are hundreds of review sites which where they can express negative sentiment and hurt the healthcare professional’s online reputation.

Just monitoring the health of their online reputation can be an painstakingly difficult. Few software do a good job at scanning the deep web. The best software costs an arm and a leg. There is also the option of doing manual work, which is better left to online reputation managers. Because of compliance laws, the healthcare professionals cannot answer back on these review sites. They may be sued for breach and their may be questions of liability based on privacy issues. This is very frustration for doctors., who often are kept up at night thinking when they will be a victim of online reputation problems.

So how does the healthcare provider obtain meaningful feedback BEFORE the patient decides to go on a rant online?

Reputation 101

We have a saying, the best reputation management is prevention. Healthcare professionals need to give every single client an opportunity to give feedback before they leave the clinic. Often the client is in a hurry when they are done, so a form, electronic or otherwise, need to point the healthcare professional to the right direction. Is the front ned staff, the back end staff like the nurses, is it the facility, the doctor etc…

A pattern will emerge from short answer form, which will then lead to a direction. This is where we can develop a more specific form to get the voice of the customer and their specific concerns regarding the problematic area of the practice.