In today’s day and age when someone has a question they don’t know the answer to what do they do? They google it. As I am sure you are well aware, the internet is everyone’s source of information nowadays, however, where that information comes from is very important. For example, growing up in the technology era we have today, children were told to never listen to Wikipedia and taught how to tell if an information source is credible. The thing that can make a source most credible is if it was first-hand information, first-hand information is available in a lot of different ways, mainly by reviews. Reviews online are recommendations from strangers to get first-hand knowledge about something you may want to try. If there is information available about a product, company, etc, hearing others’ opinions and experiences before possibly wasting your money is valuable and this does not change with doctors and physicians. The more reviews a physician has the higher they will “rank” online, this makes the physician and their practice easier to find, the easier they are to find with good reviews the more likely a patient will choose that physician. In a medical study to find how patient reviews impact others’ decisions to choose that physician it was found that “information attributes, such as review style and review number, have an impact on the evaluation of the review and on the patient’s attitude toward the rated doctor”. This once again shows that not only do the amount of reviews makes a difference but the style of the review, specifically, fact-based reviews have much more of an impact. It has also been found that about 90% of patients will use online reviews to evaluate doctors and 71% look at reviews online first when looking for a new physician or doctor. These statistics show that today people take online reviews as seriously as word of mouth from others, like a recommendation when talking to a friend.
When deciding if your practice should set up a place for patients to review their experience, the answer should be yes! Physician reviews help the practice become easier to find, the easier to find the more patients are likely to choose that physician, the more inclined the patient will be to leave a good review, and the cycle keeps on repeating!
Grabner-Kräuter, Sonja, and Martin K J Waiguny. “Insights into the Impact of Online Physician Reviews on Patients’ Decision Making: Randomized Experiment.” Journal of Medical Internet Research, JMIR Publications Inc., 9 Apr. 2015, https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4408377/.
Turner, Amber. “Why Patient Reviews Are so Important for Your Medical Practice and How to Get Started.” Koda Digital, 16 Oct. 2020, https://kodadigital.com/why-patient-reviews-are-so-important-for-your-medical-practice-an d-how-to-get-started/#:~:text=Ultimately%2C%20the%20more%20patient%20reviews,foc us%20your%20reputation%20efforts%20on.
By Ella Schindehette, to learn more contact [email protected].
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