Reputation Management For Doctors Could Maintain Your Online Standing - 0 views
started by Hugh Lawson on 15 Mar 12
started by Hugh Lawson on 15 Mar 12
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Reputation management for doctors is more important than ever because a doctor's reputation is critical to the success of his or her practice and standing in the community. Everyone knows that the Internet has dramatically changed how people gather information and whether people are looking for a general practitioner or a specialist to assist with a health concern, a great many of them will look online first to inform their decisions. Physicians spend years earning their credentials and developing their skills and their reputation is a major factor on whether word-of-mouth advertising sends patients to their office or drives them away.
An online reputation management service can displace/remove online complaints regarding your practice/name from the top of search results. A reputation management service will essentially bury these unfavorable complaints deeper within Google and other search engines so they cannot be found by your average internet user.
Doctors should be proactive about asking patients to rate them online. Steps as simple as sending patients a follow-up email after a visit, giving them a card to take with them, and even drawing attention to existing positive reviews can be very good, yet subtle ways to get people talking about their doctor in a positive way online. Care should be exercised not to pressure patients, but encourage them to share their positive experiences with others. This is the first step, and arguably the most important. A lot of managing online reputation is about establishing authority, so get out there early on and dominate the space. Sites like WebMD give doctors the chance to add information about their practice online, and the cost to doctors is only a few minutes to register. The benefit in having current and accurate information about a practice online cannot be understated, and web-savvy patients will recognize the efforts to engage them online and listen to their feedback.
Some doctors avoid reviews altogether by making patients sign legal agreements or gag orders that prevent them from posting online reviews. Those physicians who make use of such legal matters claim that this is the easiest way to protect their practice because they're bound by privacy policy from responding to bad reviews.
It all comes down to Reputation management for doctors. So the best way to balance the doctor's right to fair evaluation and patient's right to quality health care is to have a third-party review those comments. This will protect the rights of a physician from an unfair online trial. Doctors may not agree on how to reform health system, but the point is that patients trust their physicians and want to hear what they've got to say. Reputation management involves keeping a positive image on the web while combating any bad publicity. Your goal is to see to it that you are constantly best represented so that your practice will continue to prosper. As a practicing doctor one can only imagine how full your plate is. You simply have no space to effectively excel in your field while keeping a close eye on your reputation.