With the increasing importance of online reviews in the provider selection process, healthcare systems are adapting their digital strategies to improve consumer and patient experience. One of the nation’s most integrated health systems, UnityPoint Health, has been doing just that. They’ve been publishing star ratings and comments from their Press Ganey survey data to provider profile pages for over a year now. We spoke to UnityPoint Health’s Kasey Duffy, Regional Marketing Director, and Blake Long, Marketing Manager, about this transparency initiative and marketing’s role in driving it.

Can you give us a little background on what drove the need for this initiative around transparency? 

Kasey: Fortunately for us, upper management was committed to finding innovative ways to improve patient experience. We saw transparency as a way for providers to take a leadership role in our clinics and shape positive patient experiences.

We also wanted to focus on the consumer experience. We knew we wanted to make choosing a provider as easy as possible for healthcare consumers, and wanted to give them a clear picture of their options by presenting them with detailed feedback from previous patients. That’s where publishing star ratings and comments to provider profile pages came in.

What steps did you take to address those needs and get the initiative going?

Blake: We actually began making preparations for the initiative well in advance. We wanted to make sure that providers were ready and equipped with every tool available to them to lead the way in patient experience. We started by explaining how the program worked, why it was a necessary step to empower consumers in making better healthcare choices and how it would help physicians take control of their online reputation.

Although the initiative was driven by marketing, we thought it would be better for physicians to hear about the program from one of their peers. We spent a lot of time with our provider sponsor, going through all of the ins and outs of the initiative. She gave us great insights into what providers would be concerned about and the best way to educate others on the program. I would definitely recommend this approach to other practices as well. In the end, we were able to gain physician buy-in, which has been key to this initiative’s success.

What challenges did you face along the way? How did you address them?

Kasey: Our biggest challenge was developing an appeals process for patient comments. What would we do if a comment was published and the provider wanted it to be deleted? Should we make a rule that everything gets published good or bad—no exceptions? This was challenging because everyone had a different idea of how the process should work.

Ultimately, we implemented a notification system allowing providers to review all their patient feedback before it is published online and to come forward with any matters of concern within 30 days. We also decided that if a provider wanted a patient comment removed from the website, they would need to fill out a special online form and state their case.

Creating the appeals process was a big challenge, however we have yet to use the process as there has never been an appeals request. I believe this can be attributed to the upfront effort we’ve made in working with physicians and their concerted effort toward delivering a great patient experience.

How is this initiative impacting the organization?

Blake: We believe we’ve helped empower healthcare consumers seek out the best provider for their needs and empowered providers to improve the patient experience. And we’re seeing results. Prospective patients are now spending 50% more time on our provider profile pages and providers with reviews are receiving nearly 75% of all online appointment requests.

Patient experience scores are on the upswing as well. When looking at the data, we’ve seen our physician communications score improve from 92.1% to 95.2 % from the beginning of the initiative through the end of 2016. This has given us an opportunity to take a step forward as an organization, leading the way in patient experience—and our patients have noticed.

Additionally, the initiative has helped us solidify where we want to be in the healthcare marketplace as a medical group with a large network of primary providers and specialists. We want to be the easiest health system to access—and we believe we are accomplishing that.

And finally, what has Binary Fountain’s technology platform helped you do?

Blake: We needed a platform and company aligned with our goals of improving healthcare consumer and patient experience.  Binary Fountain’s focus on healthcare, Press Ganey partnership, and deep experience with transparency and reputation management made them a logical choice. Their Binary Star Ratings solution has helped us effectively manage reviewing and publishing star ratings and comments.

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Register now for the upcoming webinar on April 27^th, featuring executive guest speakers from UnityPoint Health, Press Ganey, Binary Fountain and more. You’ll hear strategies and advice for helping your practice become a more trusted voice for your patients as well as steps for adopting and managing a successful transparency initiative of your own.

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Online Feedback and Trust

Summer’s around the corner and many of us are planning summer vacations. We’re doing online research to help make decisions about where to stay, new beach essentials, activities for the family, and which new restaurants to try out. We’re coming to trust this information, often as much as a recommendation from a friend or family member. Peer reviews and 5-star ratings have a meaningful and significant impact in our day to day decisions, and healthcare consumers are no different. It’s critical that you pay attention to what patients are saying about you, no matter where they say it.

If you’re a healthcare marketing professional, you may have an abundance of CAHPS survey data at your fingertips. Combine that with email survey campaigns, online ratings and reviews, and social media comments, and your patient experience picture begins to grow and become more detailed. When it comes to ratings and reviews on third-party sites like Healthgrades, Facebook, Yelp and Google, it’s important to assume that an overwhelming majority of the feedback is genuine. Of course, not all patient comments will cover every aspect of their doctor’s visit or hospital stay, but it will reflect meaningful moments of their perceived experience.

The truth is that most credible third-party sites invest time verifying the integrity of their ratings and reviews; after all, their own reputation is on the line (think of Amazon’s “Verified Purchase” tag). So, if you come across a less-than-stellar review, imagine that patient who posted it standing in front of you. What would you say to them? Proactively addressing their experience can go a long way toward winning back that patient’s trust and loyalty, not to mention the countless potential patients reading that online review. Remember: creating a better patient experience leads to a better online reputation.

Patient Experience is Everyone’s Business

Within the health systems and practices that we interact with every day at Binary Fountain, the roles and responsibilities around “patient experience” are rapidly evolving. Multiple departments now have a distinct impact on patient experiences, with marketing now playing an integral role. Why? Patient interactions with their providers are no longer just at the point of care—they’ve gone digital and the patient experience starts well before they step foot in your office or hospital. With keen insights into timely online patient feedback from ratings and review sites, social media, surveys and more, marketing is quickly becoming a key collaborator in the patient experience discussion.

Traditionally, a patients’ experience with the nurse or doctor solely drove the patient experience. Today, however, that’s expanded to include more experience “touchpoints”, including digital. Is it easy for a patient to find you, and is the information they discover online accurate? If a patient has a complaint, will someone promptly follow up with him or her? As I said before, every moment is meaningful, and patient experience and marketing teams can work hand in hand to create a positive experience throughout the patient’s journey.

Making Sense of Star Ratings and Reviews

It’s easy to see that five stars are better than two or three stars, but what really qualifies a five-star rating? How do you make sense of open-ended comments and feedback? Going back to my Amazon reference, think about a typical purchasing experience. When you’re making a decision to buy a new product, you want to see more than just an average rating, right? You want to read comments from real people who have already purchased and used this product, both positive and negative. Did it live up to expectations? Did it provide lasting value? Would you purchase it again?

Experiential data helps put into context why someone gave that product a three-, four- or five-star rating. That’s why it’s important to understand the operational patient experience factors that are working well—bedside manner and communication, for instance—as well as those that require prompt service recovery—front desk staff or wait time, for instance.

With online feedback continuing to grow, we need to move forward with addressing these challenges to create a better patient experience and online reputation. How are you analyzing online patient feedback? Are marketing and patient experience working together? Email me with your thoughts.

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The need for reputation management is steadily growing as consumers head online to read and write reviews on patient experiences. As healthcare organizations look at different ways to improve patient care, it is vitally important for them to understand both patient experience and employee engagement. Enter digital patient surveys.

We recently spoke with Kait Phillips and Aksana Koch from Binary Fountain’s customer success team, who’ve been guiding clients through implementing and managing our reputation management solution, Binary Health Analytics. Here, they share their best practices for healthcare organizations adopting digital patient surveys as part of their reputation management strategy.

Hi Kait and Aksana. With so many online reviews and ratings available, could you please give us a little insight into why healthcare practices use surveys?

Kait: Surveys can give practices a different perspective. They offer more control with the kind of feedback you’re seeking from patients. Structured questions can evaluate specific patient experience criteria, like physician communications. You can also get feedback from open-ended questions, which can reveal valuable information.

Do you find that clients are using surveys at all? To what extent? What successes are you seeing happen and why?

Kait: Yes, clients are using surveys a lot and they’re really happy with the volume of feedback they’re getting. By asking patients for their feedback after a visit, practices often receive many more surveys than online reviews. They are also very successful at getting responses, typically with a 15-20% response rate.

Fairfax Radiology Consultants (FRC), for instance, has seen very positive results with surveys to help improve reputation and patient experience at their 17 outpatient imaging facilities. They are very focused on improving wait times, so they customize their surveys related to that issue. By doing so, they’ve achieved a 24% response rate, receiving 3,200 surveys per month. They use the insights gathered as part of their effort to achieve patient experience excellence.

Aksana: We’ve also seen great success when there is a raffle as part of an email campaign. New survey responders are entered monthly. This often increases response rates considerably.

What best practices can you share on surveys and email campaigns?

Kait: The most popular way to get surveys to patients is through email campaigns. Another option is to use a tablet or desktop computer at the front desk to offer point-of-care surveys to patients in the office.

Email surveys are sent at varying times, from daily to weekly. If we integrate with the client’s system, emails can be sent out daily, which is ideal because it usually increases the response rate, helping the practice consistently receive a sizeable amount of feedback.

Aksana: It’s also best practice to keep responses on the shorter side and focused on particular areas of concern. Our clients typically receive more responses if the survey doesn’t take too much time to complete.

We always recommend including unstructured comment sections in your surveys. While structured questions allow you to know if the patient had a good or bad experience, you won’t really know the reasoning behind their feedback and this can make all the difference in improving your organization’s reputation.

Are there any survey best practices for the organization itself?

Kait: Once patient surveys are in the system, it’s best to share the data at each staff meeting and focus on the positive feedback. Certainly mention any general areas of concern, but if there is negative feedback pertaining to a particular staff member, be sure to speak with them one-on-one in a private area.

Aksana: Staff engagement can certainly affect the patient experience. Many of our clients like to integrate monthly or quarterly awards for employees who receive the most positive feedback, such as a team lunch. This motivates staff to grasp the importance of the patient experience, the importance of following the best practices of their organization and emailing surveys to patients on a regular basis.

In terms of the tablet surveys, staff members need to make it a part of a structured, daily process to encourage patients to fill out a survey at the end of their visit.

What are the benefits of surveys through email campaigns and tablets?

Kait: Patients are more likely to fill out the open-ended feedback questions in email campaigns than when using tablet surveys in the office. We’ve seen several organizations post positive comments from those open-ended questions onto their physician pages as well.

Aksana: The benefit of the tablet survey method is the ability to focus on immediate service recovery. This allows you to receive patient responses before they have even left the practice. Alerts are sent to the practice administrator as soon as the survey is completed and if someone has had a negative experience, they can work to correct it right away and turn a negative experience into a positive one. With email surveys, you still can perform timely service recovery – particularly if you’re doing them daily. It just won’t be immediate.

What are promoter campaigns? How do they tie into surveys?

Kait: Promoter campaigns are great for organizations that really want to increase their online presence. They allow practices to send an email to patients with a one-question survey to rate their visit on a 10-point scale. If they rate their experience between a 9 or 10, they will be prompted to post an online review, typically on a third-party rating and review site. However, if they choose between a 0 or 8, they will be directed to additional survey questions so that the practice can receive more feedback to better understand what needs improvement.

How does Binary Fountain’s Natural Language Processing engine (NLP) help to organize all of the feedback clients receive?

Kait: The NLP will analyze any of the unstructured comments on surveys. It will break them down into different insights and assign the category and sentiment. Both negative and positive feedback is analyzed to help discover the practices’ strengths and weaknesses.

Finally, what pitfalls should organizations be sure to avoid when implementing digital surveys?

Kait: Having surveys with too many questions is a common pitfall we’ve seen. Surveys need to be concise, and not overly time-consuming in order to receive the greatest amount of feedback. Not uploading surveys regularly is another pitfall. They should be uploaded every week if not more frequently.

When using tablets, be sure the front desk staff members are asking patients to fill out your surveys. If they neglect to do this, you’re not very likely to get much feedback.

Aksana: In addition, within the Binary Fountain system, you can exclude certain patients from receiving repeat emails and preventing survey exhaustion for patients who frequently visit your practice.

No matter your distribution choice, digital surveys help organizations identify areas for improvement, can increase employee engagement and discover ways to enhance the patient experience.

Binary Fountain’s Binary Health Analytics platform makes your patient feedback powerful. By identifying patient insights from online reviews and surveys, organizations can uncover actionable insights unlocking the keys to productivity and performance and ultimately impacting patient experience.

If you have any questions for Kait and Aksana, please send them to marketing@binaryfountain.com.

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National Doctor’s Day is here! Since 1933, each year on March 30^th Americans celebrate the integral role physicians serve, and recognize their contributions to individual lives and communities.

Healthcare organizations are celebrating everywhere. Privia Health celebrated in its “Happy National Doctor’s Day” blog post by including great patient reviews. UnityPoint Health embraced the national holiday by encouraging patients to send thanks to their providers with a selection of online thank you cards. Signature Medical Group posted a patient testimonial video on their Facebook page.

Today, patients can thank their physicians any day of the year with a positive online review. As concerned as doctors can be about reviews, the fact is most of them are positive. Our recent blog post on physician engagement makes this point:

“When we started really digging into this and showing our providers what the solution would look like, we found thousands of wonderful comments about providers in the Press Ganey surveys that never saw the light of day,” explained Karina Jennings, AVP of Marketing at Providence Health & Services. “It was really exciting for us to start putting these out into the public to show how great and well-respected the providers are.”

“Soliciting patient feedback really highlights the good work our physicians do on a daily basis,” according to Chris Turnbull, MSc, public relations manager at Carilion Clinic.

Show your doctors that they’re appreciated: share their great patient reviews with them.

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“I got a bad review on ZocDoc… can you fix that?”

We often hear from skeptical physicians who are concerned about online ratings or reviews. They’re uneasy how one unhappy patient may impact the entire practice, the actual validity of online reviews, and what value they offer to consumers, patients and families. A recent article on PatientEngagementHIT.com reported, “Seventy-eight percent of providers say that online physician reviews cause them stress, despite the fact that about a half of patients think the reviews are useful,” according to a recent study published in the Journal of General Internal Medicine.

The study went on to describe how “online physician reviews are becoming an increasingly widespread measure of patient satisfaction,” so despite the initial discomfort to some physicians, their value is undeniable in healthcare. The most successful online reputation management programs all have an important factor in common: strong physician engagement. Here are three effective strategies from our clients for engaging your physicians:

1. Communicate. Communicate. Communicate.

Proactive and consistent communication to all physicians from the outset can help allay concerns and drive engagement. Highlighting the program’s value and how it works, as well as educating them on reviews and how physicians can play an active role in their own reviews will help advance your cause. Sharing a case study on how a healthcare organization successfully managed their program can provide needed validation.

When Providence Health and Services (PH&S) initiated their transparency program, they knew communications was vital. 100 percent physician participation —no opt-outs allowed — was critical to the success of the program. Anticipating that physicians would express concerns about patient comments being posted online, they held forums to let doctors ask questions.

2. Docs Love Data and Data Empowers Change

Doctors are overachievers and competitive by nature. They’re taught to rely on empirical evidence, data and outcomes. As I mentioned, physicians can be skeptical of online reviews; some aren’t aware of any patient experience issues. This is when patient experience metrics become an eye opener.

These metrics not only identify where doctors need to improve – they incentivize them to make changes for the better. Sharing reports that rank physicians within the practices can spark their competitive side – nobody wants to be at the bottom of the reviews page with the lowest score. You may have a brilliant orthopedic doctor, but suppose he or she doesn’t score well in physician communications. At Kure Pain Management, a very talented physician went from lowest scoring to top scoring doctor at the practice by implementing personal changes based on findings in the patient experience report he received.

Patient experience data isn’t just a game changer – it’s a behavior changer.

3. Encourage Your Physicians to Participate in the Review Process

For transparency initiatives, we recommend internally sharing survey feedback with providers before starting the initiative. Providers often learn that they have much better scores and comments from the survey data. It’s a motivating factor for them to have this information posted on their provider webpages. “When we started really digging into this and showing our providers what the solution would look like, we found thousands of wonderful comments about providers in the Press Ganey surveys that never saw the light of day,” explained Karina Jennings, AVP of Marketing at PH&S. “It was really exciting for us to start putting these out into the public to show how great and well-respected the providers are.”

To give physicians a more hands-on approach of previewing their comments, we recommend implementing an internal “soft launch”. Providers get access to the solution at a read-only level to see what patients are saying about their care, helping them become more engaged in the process. In addition, developing an internal review committee for the program is important for ensuring providers that patient comments will be vetted for publishing online. We suggest creating guidelines that allow physicians to appeal comments to the committee based on their validity. This gives physicians a voice in the process.

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With digital consumerism disrupting healthcare, the patient experience is expanding past the walls of care. Online reviews by patients have been increasing 44% annually according to our own data and 84% of consumers are using this information to help select their provider. Consequently, health systems across the U.S. are under increasing pressure to improve the experience they provide patients.

As a result, Jarrard Inc. and the Phillips Cate & Hancock firm set out to do some research. The healthcare strategic communications and engagement firm recently released their latest findings on patient experience in healthcare, titled Patient Experience 2.0: Expanding Your Horizons. In their national research project, the firm explored the patient experience and satisfaction at some of the country’s top hospitals and health systems.

Patient experience is certainly at the forefront when it comes to how hospitals are addressing changes in how care is being delivered. Jarrard’s research showed that 85 percent of healthcare systems believe that patient experience is one of the top three priorities for their organization. And 64 percent of organizations reported seeing an increase in patient acquisition since starting patient experience initiatives. However, only 35 percent of healthcare practices are publishing patient reviews on their websites. It is clear that becoming more transparent could be the starting point for a patient experience initiative and one of the best ways for organizations to increase patient satisfaction.

The study also made it exceedingly clear that improving HCAHPS scores alone won’t cut it anymore. Healthcare systems that don’t adopt a consumer-driven mindset are likely already behind the curve and may fall behind on loyalty and acquisition of new patients. They must develop custom strategies that fit their organization’s and patients’ needs and values.

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Recently, Karina Jennings, AVP Marketing, and Sunita Mishra, MD, Medical Director, Clinical Innovation at Providence Health and Services (PH&S), presented a webinar entitled, “How to Make an Online Physician Ratings & Review Program a Reality.” In case you missed it, here’s part of what we learned from Karina and Sunita:

PH&S is the fourth largest not-for-profit health system in the United States. In 2014, the organization partnered with Binary Fountain to develop an online physician ratings and review program, and launched a pilot in two markets in January 2015. Today, the program is deployed across the PH&S system over five states and four brands, providing patients with information on more than 1,800 physicians and generating approximately 5,500 comments per month.

With the help of Binary Fountain, PH&S gathers Clinician and Group Consumer Assessment of Healthcare Providers and Systems (CG CAHPS) data from Press Ganey surveys, and aggregates ratings from the previous 12 months for providers with a minimum of 30 ratings. Here’s a high-level overview of PH&S manages its publishing of online ratings and reviews:

1. Press Ganey collects verified patient survey data;
2. Binary Fountain pulls monthly data from Press Ganey;
3. The Binary Fountain platform generates physician star ratings;
4. Reviewers access Binary Fountain to approve, edit or reject comments; and
5. Physician profiles are updated from the Binary Fountain platform into PH&S’s content management system.

While PH&S attempts to post all patient comments regardless of sentiment, including written remarks, the team edits for inappropriate language and Protected Health Information (PHI) to protect patient privacy. This system has been proven to boost Google search results over Healthgrades and Vitals, increase online physician profile traffic, and even generate more positive physician reviews.

Generating System-Wide Support and Expansion

The marketing team at PH&S understood that healthcare consumers are doing more of their own research when selecting a provider and that complete transparency is key. They used this knowledge as they expanded their online physician ratings and review program. The team also realized that they had no control over what patients post on third-party sites, and that partnering with Binary Fountain to publish Press Ganey survey data would help amplify positive reviews and search optimization. On average, third-party sites have fewer reviews and lower star ratings than CG CAHPS data, and Press Ganey ensures that all reviewers are verified patients.

PH&S included every physician in their ratings and review program without exception. However, only those with at least 30 ratings had their ratings and reviews posted on their physician profile. To help alleviate concerns and encourage physician engagement, the team provided a forum to let doctors ask questions and preview what the system would look like prior to going live.

Today, almost 82 percent of provider directory website traffic originates from organic search, and PH&S’s search optimization strategy has increased its online presence. Furthermore, rankings, ratings and comments have increased click-through rates by 98 percent.

After launching the program, the average increase in page views for physicians without reviews was five percent, but those with star ratings saw an increase in page views by 25 to 29 percent respectively for general practitioners and specialists.

To learn more, listen to the recorded version of this webinar or read the case study.

Contact a Binary Fountain expert today to request a personalized demonstration of Binary Fountain’s reputation management and transparency solutions.

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Insights from digital patient surveys can help healthcare organizations plan their next moves in the journey towards creating a world-class patient experience.

This month, we spoke with Nick LaRosa, Director of Sales and Marketing at Kure Pain Management, about the organization’s recent push to get patient feedback via surveys using the Binary Health Analytics platform. Here, Nick gives us insights into the initial challenges they faced and what they’ve since been able to successfully accomplish.

Hi Nick, can you give us a little background on what drove the need for this initiative around patient feedback? 

We knew we wanted to deliver excellent customer service across our seven healthcare centers but we didn’t have an effective way to measure patient experience. We had no idea how our customer service processes were performing and we believed we were at risk of losing a large number of patients. So we sought out a solution to help us better understand how we were performing and what specific changes we needed to make to become a world-class organization.

What steps did you take to address those needs and get this initiative going?

Once we identified the Binary Health Analytics platform, we immediately saw it as a crucial tool to helping us gain patient feedback, benchmark and track progress.

We had previously been using iPads to conduct post-care patient surveys, and this was a very time-consuming process. So, we began the initiative by switching to digital patient surveys through email campaigns with Binary Health Analytics, which greatly improved time management with office staff. And once the data and feedback started coming in, we uncovered significant patient concerns and immediately began addressing them.

What challenges did you face along the way? How did you address them?

There was some initial pushback from physicians and others throughout Kure. They didn’t think there were any issues, and they assumed the organization was doing a great job at patient satisfaction. However, to our good fortune, using Binary Fountain’s platform helped us reveal and share insights on how patients were really feeling. It was a definite eye-opener.

To address adoption, I started forwarding the negative surveys to highlight what pain points the organization or specific physicians needed to tackle. At that point, everyone in the organization agreed there were indeed issues that needed to be addressed. Moving forward, we celebrated positive reviews together and held staff accountable for negative reviews, while motivating them to improve.

How is this initiative impacting the organization?

This initiative has brought about positive results for our organization. It has helped us greatly improve customer service by educating staff members and introducing better-quality processes. This has significantly increased patient satisfaction and loyalty.

Measurable data is really giving us the drive and baseline to improve the customer lifecycle. For instance, one physician really wanted to see his patient experience scores and feedback. He was a brilliant doctor, but his scores didn’t fare so well in the customer service category. Once he was aware of the areas he needed to improve upon, he went from the lowest scoring physician at the practice to the top scoring doctor by implementing personal changes.

The fact that surveys and scores are being circulated throughout the organization keeps physicians accountable and creates a friendly competition to be the best.

What have the outcomes been to date?

Since implementing this initiative over nine months ago, the digital patient surveys have helped to significantly improve our online reviews and scores by about 95 percent. Kure Pain Management’s Yelp review score went up 110 percent for example, and our GooglePlus score increased by 314 percent.

All in all, positive online reviews have increased over 30 percent, while negative reviews have gone down by more than 60 percent. We’ve also seen a huge increase in patient experience scores, where patient loyalty went up about 35 percent and timely care scores soared over 100 percent.

And finally, what has Binary Fountain’s technology platform helped you do?

The Binary Health Analytics platform has allowed us to measure how we do as a business and provides precise direction on how we can successfully continue forward. We’ve been able to track performance with automated reports, communicate internally and develop our staff. It’s also helped improve staff time management, decrease patient wait times and even reduce spending across the organization. We’re striving to become world class and Binary Health Analytics is helping us get there.

The platform has helped us improve our reputation and the brand image of Kure Pain Management by increasing transparency throughout the organization as well as with our patients.

To learn more about how Binary Health Analytics can help improve your organization, contact us at marketing@binaryfountain.com.

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In Part 1 of our Reputation Management Best Practices interview we spoke with Kait Phillips and Aksana Koch, from Binary Fountain’s Customer Success team, about what advice they would give on engaging online reviews as a part of a successful healthcare reputation management strategy.

In Part 2, they go a little further into best practices, giving us their expert tips on digital healthcare surveys, expanding on strategies for responding to extremely negative reviews, and sharing how to begin your own reputation management program.

Q: In Part 1, you gave us your recommendations for responding to negative and positive reviews. What do you recommend doing when a patient posts a review with possible legal implications, for example?

Kait: For reviews that have legal implications, such as containing PHI, libel, we advise engaging the legal department immediately. They can provide instruction on how to proceed, reach out to the patient about their issue and request the comment be removed. It’s important to address the issue promptly and take the conversation with the patient offline.

Aksana: We also recommend our clients set up notifications for these type of reviews, based on keywords. So if someone threatens legal action against a physician in a review, the practices’ legal department will be notified immediately.

Q: The Binary Health Analytics Platform provides healthcare providers a complete view into managing patient feedback, not only on online reviews and ratings, but surveys as well. Why and when should a healthcare organization use surveys?

Aksana: Healthcare surveys are essential in helping organizations understand the elements of care that patients value. A well-crafted patient survey can thoroughly assess the patient’s experience and provide solid, accurate data to be used in development of change initiatives. Ultimately, a questionnaire can improve the quality of treatment while simultaneously increasing the financial profitability of the hospital.

The standard government mandated HCAHPS and CG-CAHPS surveys ask a series of questions that cover everything from access, communication quality from the doctor, environment of care, nurse care, medication teaching quality, to discharge instruction, and beyond. They are distributed by a patient experience advisory company like Press Ganey, the top survey providers in the healthcare industry. They manage the entire process from reaching out to the hospital to have the survey done to collecting the data and reporting back it to the hospital. That information is then reported to the government for the 2 percent reimbursement that is tied to the surveys.

Kait: With the Binary Health Analytics platform, our clients can run campaigns and surveys to help them understand their strengths and where they need to improve. If they give their experience a low score, the intelligent platform continues with the survey questions in order for the organization to better understand how they can improve in the future. If the score goes below an acceptable rating, the practice manager, patient experience or marketing professional can immediately be notified so they can quickly follow up and perform service recovery.

Q: Finally, do you have any advice for practices that are beginning their own reputation management program?

Aksana: Certainly! Start promoting your online presence to patients and encourage them to engage with your practice on social media. We always recommend for our clients to claim their pages, such as their Yelp, and ask customers to leave reviews on them. It’s vital that healthcare organization take control of these. Definitely reach out to your loyal, happy patients! It can help build your brand and your healthcare organization.

Kait: I recommend auditing your current reputation when you start. The old saying you can’t manage what you can’t measure applies here. And there’s increasing demand on marketing to show ROI. Establishing a baseline will help you understand where you stand, how you’re improving over time, and serves as a source to prove success as you work toward managing your reputation.

Binary Fountain’s leading technology platform helps healthcare organizations to create a profitable patient experience for their organization by spearheading the online reputation management movement through patient feedback from online ratings, reviews, social media and surveys.

If you have any questions for Kait and Aksana, please send your questions to marketing@binaryfountain.com.

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In the healthcare industry, the need for reputation management is steadily growing. Healthcare consumers are increasingly writing online reviews about their patient experiences as well as looking to others’ reviews to guide their own physician choices.

We recently spoke with Kait Phillips and Aksana Koch from Binary Fountain’s customer success team, who’ve been guiding clients through implementing and managing our reputation management solution, Binary Health Analytics, about the best practices for healthcare organizations when implementing a successful reputation management strategy.

Q: Hi Kait and Aksana. Could you please give us a little overview about the patterns you’ve seen in healthcare patient reviews?

Aksana: We’ve found that people usually post positive reviews within a couple days of their visit. However, negative reviews vary much more in timing. They might be submitted by a patient while he or she is experiencing a long wait at their physician’s office or weeks later when a billing issue arises.

Kait: Another trend we’ve seen is that reviews continue to increase in number particularly when the practice regularly engages and responds to patient feedback. When prospective patients see that the practice is listening to feedback and responding, it encourages further customer engagement.

Q: Who typically responds to patient reviews on physician online ratings and reviews sites?

Aksana: For hospitals or practices we usually recommend finding a practice manager or a marketing manager to oversee all of the incoming reviews and respond to them online.

Kait: Yes, and for smaller clients it’s commonly a more centralized approach, where someone from the corporate marketing department will respond to patient reviews.

Q: What are your recommendations for responding to reviews?

Kait: We definitely recommend responding to both positive and negative reviews within two to three business days. If the review is negative, it’s best to reach out to the patient and provide them a way to contact the patient relations specialist or practice manager rather than resolving the issue publicly online. This avoids engaging in public conversations that could reveal Protected Health Information (PHI), or draw unwanted attention to the issue before you have a chance to seek resolution with your patient.

In the Binary Health Analytics platform, our clients can set up templated responses for different types of reviews. You don’t want to be seen always writing the same responses word for word to every customer, but you also want to keep them relatively generic. Again, carefully prepared, non-specific responses protect against revealing PHI, helping mitigate risk and respecting the patient. Corporate and legal teams can help to decide how the marketing department or assigned respondent should reply to negative and positive comments and what type of language should be used.

Aksana: Some practices may only respond if the rating given is under three stars, however we suggest acknowledging all reviews. You should even engage with patients who leave glowing, positive reviews and thank them for choosing your practice.

Q: Why is it so important to engage with online reviews?

Aksana: It’s very important for prospective patients to see that the practice is responding to patient reviews, both positive and negative ones. It shines a better light on that practice if potential customers can see that someone is reading the reviews and is concerned about patients’ experiences.

Kait: Yes, it’s important to be accessible and encourage an environment of openness and transparency with clients.

Also, when a patient leaves a negative review, the marketing manager or patient experience manager can address the concern and reach out to the patient in order to turn a negative experience into a positive one. In cases like this, we frequently see patients come back to the negative review they previously left, and update it with a positive response indicating that their issue had been resolved and praising the practice for their customer service. Prospective patients will see these exchanges and appreciate that your practice is patient-centered and concerned about their well-being, as well as their satisfaction.

If you have any questions for Kait and Aksana, please send them to marketing@binaryfountain.com.

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