3) Humanize your practice (and yourself)
Consumers view healthcare more as a service than ever before. They want to feel confident and comfortable choosing a doctor online. Physicians must build an online patient-facing profile that’s both professional and personable. It needs to be easy to understand and should avoid using highly clinical terms and unnecessary medical and academic jargon. Providers should consider including videos to introduce themselves and show their personalities, and images to give patients a clearer picture of the team behind the practice. Consider streaming patient reviews to physician profile pages to give online visitors deeper information to help in their decision making. The goal is to create a welcoming environment that helps patients envision themselves in your care.

4) Engage with patients in real time

It’s critical that providers engage their online audience in an ongoing, two-way and real-time dialogue. However, this is often easier said than done, especially when providers find themselves overwhelmed with more online reviews than they can manually manage. This is the point at which the centralized dashboard of an Online Reputation Management (ORM) solution becomes important. An ORM solution aggregates reviews across hundreds of websites into a single platform, where organizations can monitor and respond to reviews in one place, and mine review content to identify trends and recurring issues.

Here are a few “must-dos” for healthcare organizations when it comes to Online Reputation Management:

• Respond to every single negative review in as close to real-time as possible
• Don’t ignore positive reviews. Try to respond to 20 percent of positive reviews, and share these reviews with your providers. This is great for employee engagement initiatives.
• Make sure all review responses are HIPAA-compliant and keep patient privacy top of mind. Work with your organization’s legal team to develop approved responses that your team can use as templates for most reviews.

Ultimately, physicians need to understand the online behaviors of healthcare consumers and adapt their online presence accordingly. By implementing the four recommendations outlined above, your organization will greatly improve its ability to attract new patients and thrive in today’s online healthcare marketplace.

About the Author: Lindsay Burton is director of healthcare practices at Reputation.com

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