The digital age forced all industries to pivot and learn to operate virtually. For medical practices, the result is telemedicine or virtual doctor services — which became more relevant than ever in the recent pandemic. Medical practices are compelled to offer or improve their telehealth services, where telemedicine reviews have quickly become a valuable differentiator.
Telemedicine is the remote delivery of healthcare and clinic services through the use of information and communication technologies (ICT) or electronic forms of communication.
Strictly speaking, telemedicine refers to clinical services, while telehealth covers remote healthcare services as a whole, such as provider training. But there isn’t an issue with using the terms interchangeably — and colloquially, telemedicine is referred to as teledoc or teladoc.
It’s easy to see why telemedicine is booming — a scheduled online doctor consultation beats spending hours in traffic and the dreaded waiting room. But in the recent pandemic, physically going to the clinic is either not possible or too tedious.
Between stay-at-home orders, physical gathering restrictions and strict sanitation protocols, a virtual doctor consultation is the best option. As more patients discover its convenience and practicality, telehealth will continue to grow — and your practice needs healthcare reputation management to rise with it.
Healthcare reputation management deals with improving your medical practice trust factors through teledoc reviews. You need the right telehealth review response strategy to maintain a positive reputation and improve your patient acquisition.
In this blog, we talk about how telehealth reviews impact your medical practice and specific steps on how to respond to teladoc patient reviews. We discuss:
• The value of telehealth reviews
• How to respond to teledoc reviews
• Improving your telemedicine physician reviews
Understanding Patient Satisfaction and Telehealth Reviews
A positive patient experience is all about delivering high-value care and ensuring every patient interaction is delightful. The Accenture 2019 Digital Health Consumer Survey reveals that next to affordability, patients decide on a medical service based on convenience and reputation.
Additionally, more than half of respondents expect digital capabilities — increasingly influencing their decision on where to seek medical services. Focusing on showcasing your services through teladoc reviews will improve your patient acquisition and retention.
The relationship between patient satisfaction and teladoc reviews is simple — meet your patient’s needs, keep them happy and let your online doctor reviews showcase your superior bedside manner and excellent service delivery.
Online doctor reviews reflect your standards of care, and your patients decide if you’re the right fit. Patients trust reviews because they offer a customer’s perspective on your services, like having an online doctor consultation through another person’s eyes.
Some of the top platforms for online doctor reviews are Google, Yelp, WebMD and Healthgrades. Because medical practices have no control over these reviews, adding a layer of transparency patients appreciate.
Healthcare reputation management leverages online reviews as a measure of your patient satisfaction to place your best foot forward.
But telemedicine is certainly not without challenges. In positioning your practice for success, you need a firm grasp on your patient touchpoints to know how to best improve your reviews.
Telemedicine hurdles you should be aware of:
1. Not everyone is familiar with teledoc
While many are comfortable in dealing with teledoc services, every patient’s level of understanding will vary. For example, when your patient is not tech-savvy, it will be easy for them to be frustrated with your process. Do your best to make your services inclusive.
2. Your patient interactions are limited
Your patients appreciate the feeling of being valued. The natural challenge of virtual consultations is that it removes social factors like body language that help your patients feel that you care. It takes an extra effort to be sincere and warm through a camera or a phone call. Find innovative ways to build relationships with your teledoc patients.
3. Your patient’s needs evolve
Especially regarding anything to do with technology, preferences change quickly. Your teledoc practice needs to continuously adapt to keep up with your patient’s requirements. And you need to showcase that you have what your patients need through online doctor reviews.
How to Respond to Teledoc Reviews
Responding to your teladoc reviews is just as important as receiving them. You need to respond to your reviews (the good and the bad) because it reflects how you value your patients and how committed you are improving your telemedicine practice.
Telehealth review response is critical to doctor reputation management primarily because your patients will read them. A 2020 study found that 90 percent of patients use online reviews to evaluate physicians (Software Advice). BrightLocal statistics show that from everyone who reads your reviews, 97 percent will also read your response.
Five expert tips on telehealth review response:
1. Be HIPAA-compliant
The Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act (HIPAA) provides strict guidelines on protecting patient privacy. It prohibits all forms of patient information disclosure. In responding to teladoc patient reviews, this means ensuring your response does not confirm nor deny that the reviewer was your patient, at the very least.
The best way to work around this is to keep your review responses general. Instead of saying “thank you for choosing us,” you can say, “we appreciate you leaving us great feedback.” HIPAA violations penalties are anywhere from $100 to $50,000 depending on the gravity of the offense, so always be on the right side of HIPAA requirements.
2. Thank Your Patients
We know how valuable telemedicine physician reviews are, but they’re not easy to acquire. You can strategize to encourage customers to leave teladoc reviews, but that doesn’t mean they will act accordingly. For those who do take time out of their day to leave you positive feedback, show them you appreciate their time through a unique and humanized review response.
Reviewers who leave negative feedback also take time out of their day, so you need to thank them for helping you, with a response like “we appreciate all feedback that helps us improve.” Knowing you respond to your telemedicine reviews shows you value your patients and can encourage more patients to leave you the reviews you need.
3. Offer a Resolution
Crafting general responses are simpler when the review is positive. However, you instinctively want to defend yourself when faced with negative feedback. Remembering HIPAA guidelines, you need to always remember to never disclose patient information, even if it’s to dispute their claims.
So, how do you resolve negative feedback? You can ask them to get in touch with you directly and discuss your engagement privately, as to not violate HIPAA regulations. A great response to negative feedback would be, “This experience falls short of our commitment to great service. Please get in touch with us through [phone] or [email], so we can make it right.” You may even turn their negative review around.
4. Always Be Professional
No one would want to schedule an online doctor consultation from a teledoc service provider who responds rudely. This may sound obvious but seeing an upsetting review can trigger some healthcare professionals to react before thinking it through.
The best way to avoid this is to respond to reviews during downtime and when you’re in the best mood. In fact, even typographical errors in your review response can reflect poorly on your professionalism. Make the extra effort to be polite.
5. Answer Quickly
Studies show that feedback through teladoc reviews shouldn’t be left unanswered for more than 72 hours. You want your patients to feel heard to improve the patient experience you provide. A dedicated telehealth review response service would be able to guarantee review responses within 48 hours.
These five basic rules apply equally to telemedicine physician reviews and traditional healthcare reviews — the online doctor reviews just differ in context. For example, using the Zoom video conferencing software would elicit Zoom telehealth reviews saying they waited in the virtual waiting room for a long time, as opposed to a physical location.
The goal is always to improve your reviews to grow your practice.
Improving Your Telemedicine Reviews
Here’s the most important thing you should know — you cannot avoid negative reviews. Miscommunication happens frequently, and you can only do your best to minimize issues.
Steps to take to improve your teladoc patient reviews:
1. Manage Expectations
Telemedicine has many great advantages, but it also has its fair share of limitations. You don’t want your patients to feel disappointed for reasons that could be avoided by properly setting expectations. For example, there may be certain drugs that cannot be prescribed virtually or certain procedures that must be done in-person.
While most insurance providers accept telemedicine as valid medical services, it could be different for your patient’s particular provider and become upsetting for them. Improve your teladoc reviews by giving the patient everything they need to know and allowing them to ask questions before going further into your engagement.
2. Address Platform Issues
As a non-traditional healthcare service, your teledoc practice is highly dependent on technology. You would often use third-party software like Zoom to examine your patients through a video call. If your patients encounter issues like faulty connection or spending a long time in the waiting room, this can lead negative Zoom telehealth reviews.
Even if you don’t control your patient’s experience on third-party platforms, it’s important for you to master them to be able to guide your patients from beginning to end. Improved knowledge of platforms like Zoom will influence better Zoom telehealth reviews and contribute to the overall smoothness of your patient experience.
3. Monitor Multiple Review Sites
You need to make sure your average rating across the board is high and you are addressing your negative feedback as much as you can. One negative review is damaging, but to have too many in a single review site spells even worse news.
Here’s an example using Yelp, one of the most popular review sites. What you don’t want is for your potential patient to search “Teladoc reviews Yelp” and be greeted with tons of negative reviews that piled up from not monitoring the platform closely.
Your teladoc reviews Yelp score has suffered and it’s much harder to recover than if you had review monitoring in place. Keep an eye on your reviews so that the next time someone searches “Teladoc reviews Yelp,” your reputation is safe.
You can’t avoid negative feedback but there are ways to control it through physician reputation management techniques. Set the proper expectations, master your platforms and monitor your reviews — but it becomes easier when you get external assistance.
Hiring a Telehealth Review Response Service
A comprehensive healthcare reputation management service covers generating reviews and monitoring reviews, but in your field, a professional telehealth review response service is indispensable.
You would be guaranteed of HIPAA-compliant review responses and close monitoring of your online reputation across more than 300 review sites, while actively pursuing better reviews.
Rize Reviews is the professional healthcare reputation management service you need. We’ve mastered HIPAA regulations and we specialize in crafting pre-approved human responses to your teledoc reviews. At Rize, our review response time is between only one hour and one business day.
Our 100 percent done-for-you services include a fully-managed reputation management software that sends alerts for all your online brand mentions. On the same platform, we stay on top of your average cross-platform review ratings. We take a specialized approach to helping you recover from continuous negative feedback through online reputation repair.
Contact Rize Reviews for a free online reputation audit and discover how we propel your telemedicine practice through our expertise in increasing patient satisfaction ratings.
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