Online reputation management for physicians
Internal Medicine
Recertification Course
BY LAURA HALE BROCKAWAY As more patients go online to find information about physicians, your reputation is be- ing built and managed on the Internet. And like it or not, your online reputation plays a role in acquiring new patients and maintaining trust with existing pa- tients and colleagues. It is imperative for physicians to have a plan and focus on online reputation management. Online reputation management is
the process of preventing and repairing threats to your online reputation. It is done by tracking what is written about you and using techniques to address or moderate the information on search engine result pages or in social media. The goal is to promote positive or neu- tral content while suppressing negative content. For physicians, online reputation management involves addressing infor- mation in three areas: information found on search engine result pages, on social media, and on rating sites such as Vitals, HealthGrades, Rate MDs, Yelp, and An- gie’s List. Recently, a physician received an
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email from a company offering online reputation management services to help him mitigate negative online reviews on sites such as Yelp, Google, and health care review sites. Hundreds of companies offer these
services. Physicians are urged to use extreme caution when choosing a rep- utation management company. Some companies engage in questionable tech- niques that could lead to disciplinary ac- tion by the Texas Medical Board (TMB). Specifically, the company that emailed this physician said it “will post reviews for our clients to over 40 social media web sites . . . We post up to 25 reviews per month.”
This claim is alarming in the context of medical practice. How are they man- aging to post reviews from the patients of a particular physician? Are they mak- ing up reviews and then posting them? It is unethical and dishonest to post re-
14 TEXAS MEDICINE November 2013
views on these sites that are not from actual patients. Physicians are held to a different standard than other business- es, and posting fake patient reviews is problematic. Doing so would also violate TMB advertising rules, as this type of advertising (and the TMB does consider this to be advertising) would be consid- ered “misleading.” Following are a few techniques for managing your own online reputation.
Know what is being said. Conduct web searches on yourself and your practice regularly. Review the first 30 hits of the search. (Any hit past 30 is generally considered extraneous and not likely to be read.1
) Among the top
30 hits, what are these sites saying about you? Continue to monitor these online discussions.
Know what you can and cannot do about negative reviews. Because of health care privacy laws, phy- sicians cannot respond to online reviews. The fact that a patient’s identity is pro- tected information directly hinders the physician’s ability to refute a complaint. Simply acknowledging publicly that the complaining party is a patient breaches confidentiality and violates HIPAA. Physicians can consider giving pa-
tients more constructive ways to offer their feedback. Conducting a patient sur- vey, for example, would be a good way for patients to express their dissatisfac- tion and feel empowered.
Another option is to talk to the pa-
tient directly if you can identify who made the comment. This should be done in person or over the phone. Begin by asking why he or she is dissatisfied. Investigating the patient’s complaints is also a good idea. Is the complaint le- gitimate? Was the problem with a pro- cedure, a staff member, or the patient’s wait time? Can the problem be fixed?
Optimize your site for search engines.
Optimizing your site for search engines will ensure that anyone typing in your name or your practice name will see your website at the top of the search list. Optimizing your site involves creating
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