How to Leverage Your 5-Star Reputation to Get More Patients

Patients love their healthcare providers and not just because they’ve been taking care of them for years. These patients have good reason to trust and recommend their providers with such high marks. A 2018 study found that having 5-star reviews on Yelp and Google leads to 28% greater likelihood that someone will look up a hospital or clinic’s website in the future. With this in mind, it’s important to keep your 5-star reputation after each visit, so you can attract more patients in the future. Keeping your existing patients happy is one thing, but attracting new prospects is another.

Reputation management is the process of continuously improving your company’s standing in order to ensure long-term patient loyalty and trust. It involves working with various stakeholders like marketing professionals, human resources professionals, and other key decision makers in order to create lasting positive changes within the organization. If you want to stay ahead of your competitors and increase patient retention rates among current patients, read on.

Ask For Feedback Often

Evaluate your practice performance and how your patients are responding to your care. When patients or caregivers have suggestions or constructive feedback about your practice, take notice and act on it. Ask them about their experience with your office staff, the cleanliness of your waiting room, and what your future growth would look like if they had any suggestions. When possible, take advantage of online review forums, social media channels, and other communication channels to gather feedback.

While you don’t have to adhere to every comment you receive, you can gain a better understanding of your audience and what they expect from your practice. If you receive a lot of negative feedback, ask yourself why it’s happening. If you come up with a reason, you can use that feedback to improve your practice.

Stay Tuned to What Your Consumers Are Saying

There is no better way to see what your patients are thinking than to listen to their feedback.

Even if you’re busy, find a few spare moments during your shift to head online. Take notes on what your patients are saying, whether you’re seeing them in the office, on the phone, or online. When you see a trend in what we call “patient” comments, take action on it. After each visit, make sure to write down any issues that your patients are having with their experience, be it minor or major ones.

Write them down, transfer them to your electronic medical record, or make sure they’re recorded on video so you can refer back to them when you have time. Make a habit of doing this when you’re in the middle of a patient’s visit to really capture their sentiment. When writing down issues that patients have, don’t focus on your side of the story; focus on what your patients are complaining about. By doing this, you can both address the issues and keep your patients happy.

Be Honest, but Be Sure To Thank Your Patients Too

When patients give you feedback, be honest and transparent about your practice. Address any areas of improvement that you need to work on and make sure that any concerns you have are addressed.

However, don’t neglect thanking your patients. Patients appreciate receiving a genuine “thank you” along with their feedback. Even if you don’t mean it, it’s important to show that you remember what your patients have done for you.

When you’re in an overwhelmed state, it can be easy to forget to show appreciation for your patients. However, doing this in a casual, but genuine way can go a long way towards keeping your patients coming back.

Don’t Take Things Personally

You need to be confident and professional when approaching your patients with constructive feedback.

If you’re too upset by the issues that they’re bringing up, you’ll make mistakes along the way.

Instead of getting upset about the complaints that you hear during your shift, try to take note of what your patients are saying. When you find something wrong with your practice, address it and make sure that your patients are happy and satisfied with the experience.

You don’t have to address everything that your patients say, but you do have to address their issues and address them head-on. When you do this, it shows that you care and that you’re willing to work towards improvement.

Don’t Rest on Your Laurels; Continue to Work Towards Improvement

As your practice grows and evolves, so will your reputation management practices. There will be times when you receive negative feedback, but you’ll also have moments when things are going smoothly.

Use the positive feedback to fuel your desire to constantly improve your practice.

By doing this, you’ll be able to recognize where your strengths lie and make adjustments accordingly. This will help you to avoid issues when they arise down the line and keep your practice on the path to growth and success.

Conclusion

As a healthcare provider, there are always challenges that you’ll need to overcome. It can be difficult to find new patients as most people seek continuity of care when it comes to their healthcare providers.

To overcome this challenge, you’ll need to leverage your existing 5-star reputation to get new patients. It’s important that you take the time to maintain a stellar reputation online.

There are other of ways that you can do this. You can create high-quality content for your website, blog, and social media accounts.

You can also build strong relationships with local businesses and community members. By following these steps, you can ensure that your 5-star reputation remains strong.

As such, it’s important that you leverage the strategies outlined above to ensure that you have time to work on improving your reputation management practices.

Learn How To Get 5 Star Reviews