Opportunities and risks through evaluation portals for doctors
Evaluation portals for doctors are currently a much-discussed topic. Some see great opportunities and many advantages in this. Others see them as a major threat to doctors. In this blog article, we show you the most important opportunities and risks of review portals. You will then receive important tips on what you should pay attention to when you are active on these portals.
What are review portals for doctors and what are they there for?
Review portals are pages on the Internet where doctors and their practice can register in order to be rated there. The point of them is simple. It is about patients sharing their experiences with a doctor with others and evaluating the doctor. In this way, potential other customers can draw on these experiences. This should help them choose a doctor.
A distinction is made between portals, which are only for one sector, in this case for doctors, and cross-industry platforms. Doctors are rated here with school grades, points or stars. There are often different categories, such as opening hours or the friendliness of the staff, which can be rated. Sometimes, however, only a general assessment is required. Many portals also offer the option of a premium account. As a rule, you have to pay for this, for which the user then benefits from various additional functions. But no matter which portal and regardless of whether paid or free of charge, the function always remains the same: reviews from patients for patients that are as authentic as possible.
Which rating portals are there for doctors?
Rating portals are now very well-known and popular in all industries. This is also the case with doctors. There are now a variety of providers of medical portals. Among the most famous are
Even though each of them advertises different, somewhat modified features, their basic function is all the same: They offer a platform on which patients can directly share their experiences and rate doctors.
However, there are not only rating portals that are specifically designed for doctors, but also a variety of cross-industry platforms. The most important one here is Google. If you have a Google Business profile, which is highly recommended, there is also the feature here that you get rated. If you don't have Google My Business yet, check out our blog articles helpful tips for creating. Google reviews are so important because people see them as soon as they come across your practice on Google. However, there are numerous other industry-independent portals, such as Yelp.
possibilities
Review portals naturally offer great help for your customers. They can rely on the opinions of previous patients and therefore do not feel so overwhelmed by the huge range of different practices on offer.
But review portals also offer an advantage for you as a doctor. By making entries on the corresponding pages, you can automatically increase your online presence. This in turn increases your profile and brings you new patients. Nowadays, it is important for practices to be listed as high as possible in Google search results. Because when someone is looking for a new doctor, they usually find out more via Google. With a higher number of reviews, Google ranks your page higher up. Many portals also have the option to search for doctors in the area on their own website. If you use these portals, this also increases the probability that you will be found and thus be able to attract new patients. This is how review portals help you become more well-known as a doctor.
In addition, review portals are always marketing portals that you can use for yourself. A professional profile convinces patients of your competence and helps attract new patients. If the marketing effect is particularly important to you, then there is often the opportunity to gain even more marketing functions with a premium profile. For example, an image or a direct link to the practice's homepage can then be inserted. But even if you're not ready to spend money on your profile, you have plenty of options that you should always use.
Evaluation portals are also always a free opportunity for you as an attending physician to receive feedback directly from patients. In this way, you always have an overview of the perceived quality of your services. You can use this as a basis for future strategies and adapt current processes. Patients tell you what they are missing and where there is potential for improvement. At the same time, you will of course also receive feedback about what your patients appreciate about your practice. If you actively take this feedback into account, you can constantly improve your practice without having to carry out expensive patient surveys.
risks
As with almost everything on the Internet, review portals cannot guarantee the authenticity of contributions. Even though most portals have introduced certain mechanisms to verify the authenticity of comments, they can never guarantee it. It is easy for anyone to create a false profile and give positive reviews for themselves, or even give the competitor a negative rating. It is impossible for operators to verify whether an account holder was really with the doctor. As a doctor, you are extremely vulnerable to such unjustified negative reviews.
Another point of criticism is that there are no uniform evaluation criteria. This makes the reviews very difficult to compare. In addition to the professional competence of the doctor himself, there are often other criteria. These range from opening times to waiting times and transport connections. And not all criteria always say something about the quality of a doctor.
As a result, reviews also become very subjective. For some, a wait of 30 minutes is no problem, while another would be annoyed by it. Of course, this is always the case with personal assessments, but this is reinforced by different evaluation criteria.
People also tend to share bad experiences more readily than good ones. This can of course severely distort the overall result. If you have a bad experience at one point, frustration is often dumped. The reviews are then no longer factually neutral, but highly emotion-driven. Someone who has had a bad experience in a review category often tends to rate other points more negatively than they actually were. For example, if a patient had to wait a long time despite an appointment, they often find the entire process and service poor without actually evaluating the doctor's performance.
Nor can it be assumed that patients have the necessary professional knowledge to correctly evaluate a doctor's professional competence. Of course, this cannot and is not expected, but it is still a risk for doctors if they are assessed on the basis of a lack of knowledge. A patient who is not satisfied with a diagnosis or treatment may judge the doctor as bad even though it was the right decision from a professional point of view. The negative evaluation may therefore be unjustified, but the other patients are unable to differentiate between them. This damages your reputation as a doctor, which can have huge consequences for you.
What you should pay attention to
Even though review portals involve some risks, they also have many benefits, both for doctors and patients. And regardless of whether you endorse the portals or not, a listing is essential for you as a doctor if you do not want to lose reputation. So that you can make your profile work to your advantage as much as possible, we have a few tips for you.
Since review portals are automatically also a marketing tool, it is important to use them correctly. Maintain your profiles and the information provided on them regularly. Information should be complete and include everything that is important to a potential patient. This ranges from contact information to opening hours, appointment booking portals, etc. This information must always be kept up to date.
You should also visit your profile regularly to check the reviews. You should actively respond to reviews. Please thank you for positive feedback and follow up on suggestions if you have constructive criticism. In this way, you can easily improve your practice's service. And even if unjustified or unobjective criticism comes up, you must always remain professional. Don't get involved in discussions or insults in the comments. Because you must never forget that not only are the reviews publicly visible, but also how you react to them. So always be polite, apologize when it's appropriate, and promise to improve. If a review is really completely unfounded, or even insulting, there is always the option to report it to the portal. The portals then review the comment and remove it if it is justified.
To be able to collect more reviews, you should let your patients know that they are welcome to leave a review for you if they were satisfied. In this way, you can increase your number of reviews and thus improve your online presence. A large number of reviews is also very important for Google search, as Google includes the number of reviews in its ranking. So it's very important that your customers rate you. With the WiFi marketing package for doctors From Socialwave, you can automatically collect reviews. Patients are automatically sent an email asking them to rate you.
conclusion
As you have seen, review portals offer doctors many options. In the meantime, they have become essential for doctors and when used correctly, they will certainly add great value to your practice.
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