Do you want to know the big secret to increasing positive patient ratings and reviews on websites around the web? It’s not as hard as you might think.

First, let’s take a look at some of the typical responses we see when a negative review comes across a practice manager’s desk:

1. Holy crap, there’s a nasty review on Facebook!  Hide it, Delete it! (not recommend as a first reaction).
2. Who is this person and why would they say that?  This typically generates some sort of reaction that involves trying to figure out who the patient is and what ‘really’ happened.
3. Geez (insert your own creative language here), who’s going to tell the doctor?  He/She really needs to understand how they are coming across when they say it like that.
4. UGH, that’s an employee they’re talking about!  Go get ‘em now and bring ‘em into my office!
5. Or, maybe you respond calmly to the review itself – apologize and offer a personal point-of contact to resolve any issues moving forward (our recommendation).

The fact is, everybody upsets somebody at some point. Unfortunately, the way that the world works these days means when someone is unhappy, they’re much more likely to go online and talk about it.

Complaining anonymously just makes people feel better.

Problem is, it can negatively affect your practice and you need to have a game plan for getting positive reviews rather than always reacting to negative ones.

Here are two email driven ideas that you can implement today to start generating immediate results:

One-on-One Patient Follow Up

Send your patient a very quick personal email that says something like this:

Dear Patient ,

Thank you so much for choosing .  We hope you were satisfied with your visit this week (these need to be timely emails).  We look forward to seeing you at your follow up appointment on XX (if relevant). 

When you have a moment, Dr. has requested that you provide feedback on the level of service you received.  Please click here to provide a quick 2-minute review so that we may continually improve patient experience.

For the ‘click here’ part, all you need to do is go to the website where you are looking to receive more reviews and grab the link.  Remember, most of these websites have very few reviews, so if you are proactive in getting some, chances are you will make a big impact on what shows up on the first page of the search engines.

Make a General Ask

Ask for reviews in your next email newsletter. If you don’t have a patient newsletter in print or online, get one.

Create a link on your website asking for your patients to review their experience.  As long as you have control of your website, this is a pretty simple addition that may deliver great results.

Ask for reviews on social media (especially to your fan base).  Health Grades and Vitals both offer social share buttons directly on their websites.  Just go to the profile you are trying to boost and click the share button to whatever social network you are active on. Ask you fans (these are your people) to provide a review.  It takes maybe 15 seconds to do and can generate instant (as in within minutes) results.