Do you care about bad reviews?

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I’m learning that you can do pretty much everything right, but if you come across a certain type of person you will get negative reviews. So my question is.. do you care about negative reviews? Any tips on how to avoid them? Let’s just assume you’re doing good work and communicating well with your patients for purposes of this thread.
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If you don't own the office, who cares?
It's often the fault of the group/hospital for asking/texting everyone for reviews... that will invariably ask the wrong ppl. A lot of the reviews will be on staff, billing, scheduling... things out of your control if you're just associate.

This is just a first job... low chance you'll even be there in a few years. I would say do the best you can; don't sweat it. Don't go out of your way to build a practice you don't have any ownership in.

...If it's your own profile/office/partnership that you'll be at awhile, yes, you want to pick and choose who you ask for reviews and get a lot of 5 star for the occasional bad one that will happen.
 
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Not really.

Also… The fake/bloated “4.9 stars” out of 689 reviews on Google for some practices make me lol
 
Reviews for doctors are just like the restaurants. The sweet spot is to aim a bit higher than 3/5 stars.
All 5 star reviews either have truly amazing and awesome doctor with a well-run clinic, or more often than not they solicit these reviews.

Otherwise things happen. My one star reviews have to do with a medicaid patient declined pain med refill, and a diabetic patient with A1c of 6.1% being told she has no qualifying risk factors for routine care.

My advice is to just ignore them, and do not engage in responding to them. The people who left these reviews may not write in coherent sentences so your potential patients should know what's going on. But responding to them and then go back and forth may not be professional, and sometimes a HIPAA violation if you disclose medical information of the patient.
 
Just don’t be a jerk. That settles any actual “real” complaint. Everything else tends to be outside of your control. Usually admin complaints or scheduling stuff, crazy unhinged patients, etc.
 
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If your hospital/msg employed: who cares if patients trash you online?! F em!!

If you're a PP associate: see above, but you may face some blowback from owner. As Feli mentioned, there's only so much control that you have over reviews, people will trash you if the secretary was rude to them.

As a PP owner I try to keep reviews over 4 stars. So yes I solicit reviews. Otherwise the only people who take the time to leave feedback are the angry ones leaving 1 star reviews. I'm sure this seems sleazy and disingenuous, but it's a saturated market so you've got to protect your reputation.

When people leave a bad review, I always respond immediately to the effect of "we're sorry you had a bad experience, we're always here for you if you ever need anything." The purpose of doing this is not to win this person back (though it might), but rather to come across as not such a bad guy and neutralize the review. This way, when the next person reads it they might not be dissuaded from becoming a patient.
 
Sweatshirt said:
Not at all. I had a 1 star review recently because the lady said she could tell that I didn't want to cut her toenails (true) and wasn't enthusiastic enough while doing it. Those people are meaningless
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That woman sounds worthless
 
If it's not your own practice, no. Half the time these people are mad at front desk or stupid. If it's your own, or a partner, yes because you need a good reputation
 
Paraphrasing the late great Mitch Hedberg:

You can’t please all the people all the time, and yesterday, all those people were in my clinic.
 
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Is anyone on here employed? Of course you're thinking about bad reviews. I especially think about it coming into a new job and not having any good will built up
 
As a solo PP owner, I care about reviews especially google reviews. Truth is in 2024, a lot of patients read reviews and pick docs based on that. I have a small practice so I run a very tight close-knit ship so staff, billing, scheduling, phone calls, check-in, check-out etc are all within my control and all falls on me if there is any screw up. So far so good my reviews/ranking have been excellent and I tend to keep it that way. I get tons and tons of new patients from reading my google reviews. They tell me whenever I ask how they found me. I have never paid for google adds even though the other docs and super group around my area do.

However if you work for a big group/practice or hospital therefore you have no much authority/control over staffing, billing, scheduling etc then there is not much you can do about reviews except if the bad reviews specifically mentions your name. Same way it can work in your favor if the good reviews mentions your name as a great doc, then patients may still deal with the rude staff just to see you to get excellent care.
 
msion said:
...responding to them and then go back and forth may not be professional, and sometimes a HIPAA violation if you disclose medical information of the patient.
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Yes, 100% ... very important point here.

You should never acknowledge that the person is or is not a patient. A lot of practices/hospitals screw this up and affirm the person is a patient of the office - and worse, they will debate them, etc. It is usually some office manager and not a doc doing it, but it's inviting trouble. The same goes for using "testimonials" on websites... use initials only, possibly first name + last initial. Never use full name or videos; that's a very gray area legally. Even if pt is on board now, they might not always be.

It's fine to say "Thanks for the positive review, [reviewer's username]" or "We're glad you're doing well, [reviewer's username"...
However, "We valued you as a patient, Brad Jones, and we are happy to hear your ankle fracture is healed" is just plain dumb.
Basically, you can agree in basic terms or thank them, but you can't affirm/deny they're a patient for HIPAA reasoning.

www.ama-assn.org

Are physicians prohibited from responding to online patient reviews?

Get real answers from the AMA to common myths about online patient reviews.
www.ama-assn.org www.ama-assn.org
(see esp first bullet point in the article from AMA)
 
The only way to not get negative reviews as a DPM is to comit medicare fraud and hand out the percocets.

100% my negative reviews are drug seekers or non qualifying nail care patients.

I got one because patient was 25 min late to 15 min appointment and I said I wouldnt see her. Mostly because it would cut into lunch and laws require staff have certain amount of time mandatory for lunch and I didnt want to be short handed at the start of the afternoon.
 
The solution for bad reviews is simply to drown them in good reviews. You are presumably having more positive experiences in a day with patients than you are negative experiences.

The orthopedic practices in my town have been doing this for the past year. A year ago the foot and ankle ortho had like 6 reviews, most of them good, but some of them capturing that he's kind of cocky in how he handles people. Now he has about 100 and they are mostly good. I figured they'd somehow found a way to get their internal reviews posted online, but apparently you can't do that. They are presumably using some sort of review service or Amezely or something like that.

Can you learn from bad reviews? Sometimes. A lot of them are unfair and potentially beyond your control. Your staff aren't going to be perfect 100% of the time - some of them are high school graduates with tough lives. I've had amazing staff and duds. I've found myself listening to phonecalls from my former manager and then gently confronting her afterwards saying - we need to always attempt to deescalate. Most patients aren't willing to fight or yell at me, but they'll yell at a receptionist. It takes a special kind of person to leave a really unkind negative review, but that doesn't mean they are always wrong. Your office may have problematic internal processes. My staff don't want to verify people's insurance before they arrive ("they told me they only had Medicare") and then they turn people away with Medicaid. No one has ever complained about that, but you are laying the groundwork for a negative review because you are generating a problematic encounter at the front desk. A person potentially waited weeks with an infection to be sent away. Turning away late people will generate negative reviews. Asking for money for uncovered nail care definitely can. I've had people claim their visit was supposed to be free do a conference call with BCBS and the office manager where BCBS says "you owe the money" and they still trash us. This may be anecdotal, but my experience is that cash pay patients sometimes don't want to agree to do anything (because it will cost money) and then will complain later that you didn't do anything for them when they wouldn't agree to do anything. I had a self-pay patient with a chronic puncture wound that I wanted to get an MRI on. His GF sat in the corner playing on her the phone the entire time, never said a word, and then trashed us over the (incredibly cheap) MRI I tried to coordinate for them. There are practices out there with no negative reviews though. Maybe they are better than you and I? Maybe they control the process better. Maybe they apologize rapidly and beg the reviewer to change their score or offer them their copay back or something. I don't know. Its easy to blame the patient and most of us don't like criticism, but take feedback where you can get it.

As for good reviews. My opinion is it takes ASKING. If you work for a hospital and have 100s of reviews - someone is asking.

1) My EHR sends out a worthless survey to a certain percentage of people. My strong suspicion is this actually sabotaged some of my good reviews because people told me they'd "left me a wonderful review" and then I could never find it anywhere. I did not even know my EHR was sending this out for the last 5 years and found the feature the other day. I was flattered to receive a 99% approval rating from my patients, but pissed because what's the point. I need Google Reviews. Not Athena reviews.

2) You can use services out there like Amezely. These are probably how some people stack the decks and run up numbers. Essentially you pay for a program that contacts people after visits and cherry picks the good reviews. Good reviews get asked to go to Google. Bad reviews get kept internally. There are super competitive areas out there. Look up "Katy Texas Podiatry". Every practice in that areas has hundreds of reviews with good scores.

3) You can directly ask patients who you are having positive experiences with AKA - cherrypicking. I will tell you that a patient who just cried and hugged you and told you that you are amazing will say "Of course I'll leave you a good review" and then a lot of the time they'll forget or won't do it. I've left people in rooms with a QR code in front of them, their phone in their hand, a promise of a review and - got jack.
-You could print QR codes for them and give it to the patient on a business card.
-You could have something waiting at your front desk ie. tell your receptionist to ask them, have pictures of your google review link, QR etc.
-You could make a note of positive encounters and try to have your office manager call them and ask the next day.
-If you are campaigning for reviews you definitely want your staff asking to and trying to convert people for you. Your cute nurse may be more persuasive than you are.

If you aren't asking and providing a link though it can be hard to convert. I'm not quite sure what inspires organic positive reviews. Maybe these people with a thousand 5 star reviews know.

Anyway, after reading this thread the other day I went and made a QR code and then asked 6 people to write me reviews. 3 did. Hopefully I will keep asking and 3 will someday become 50 and 100 and what not. Build up enough good reviews and "he didn't cut my nails 1 star" stops having as much impact.
 
heybrother said:
...

3) You can directly ask patients who you are having positive experiences with AKA - cherrypicking. I will tell you that a patient who just cried and hugged you and told you that you are amazing will say "Of course I'll leave you a good review" and then a lot of the time they'll forget or won't do it. I've left people in rooms with a QR code in front of them, their phone in their hand, a promise of a review and - got jack.
-You could print QR codes for them and give it to the patient on a business card.
-You could have something waiting at your front desk ie. tell your receptionist to ask them, have pictures of your google review link, QR etc.
-You could make a note of positive encounters and try to have your office manager call them and ask the next day.
-If you are campaigning for reviews you definitely want your staff asking to and trying to convert people for you. Your cute nurse may be more persuasive than you are.

If you aren't asking and providing a link though it can be hard to convert. I'm not quite sure what inspires organic positive reviews. Maybe these people with a thousand 5 star reviews know.

Anyway, after reading this thread the other day I went and made a QR code and then asked 6 people to write me reviews. 3 did. Hopefully I will keep asking and 3 will someday become 50 and 100 and what not. Build up enough good reviews and "he didn't cut my nails 1 star" stops having as much impact.
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Yes, concur this bolded is the way to go in PP. ^^
We do this daily (QR card to basically anyone we prn.. unless they're a grouch). Many say they'll leave a review, few actually do. I honestly think some ppl like to review, and some almost never do regardless. They nearly all know how and nearly all have gmail acct. Still, we get some awesome reviews we didn't even ask for, and others we're told "abolutely" and thought were certain never happen.

My website (in my sig) does the star thing up top... I think 1,2,3 star sends them to comment to my office. I think 4 or 5 sends them to Google. I don't want to spam the patients with emails and texts (beyond appt reminders), but maybe I will use that review text stuff at some point. I am in a smaller area where word of mouth and PCPs are keystones (and we dominate those), but in a bigger market... maybe texts prompting reviews are more needed. Even referred pts like to verify on Google that you have good rating.

The fake reviews services are not good (usually $5 or so per review). I will say, I've tried them (not for my current biz, but for past jobs). I see many big pod/ortho/med/etc groups obviously use these (hallmark is many reviews rapidly posted by accounts with just 1 or 2 total reviews or review accounts do reviews of stuff all over the country... and of course all 5 star generic sounding). I have friends in hotel, restaurant biz who have tried them also... fairly poor results. The fake reviews typically get deleted by Google pretty fast these day; they are getting very good at sweeping fake or inactive profiles or reviews from IPs far from review site. It can also get your Google biz account neutered or even removed. Not worth it.

One decent tactic I saw was a group I worked for offered $100 gift card (amaz/walmrt/etc) in a monthly or quarterly drawing for people who'd left them a Google review (they'd have to tell office real name if Google name is nickname). This was published on wait room handout rack cards or the office website or FB or whatever. I find that a bit too corny and haven't used it myself... but it's probably a bit effective. People love a giveaway. I may do this at some point (gift card or free pair PowerSteps or whatever drawing among those who reviewed my office). If I cave in and do this, I will post it... but I'm on a 1-2+ month wait for most stuff right now. I still may do it. Dunno... it's beer o'clock now. 🤔
 
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heybrother said:
Maybe they apologize rapidly and beg the reviewer to change their score or offer them their copay back
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I absolutely resort to this. Sucks but so does an unfounded review. Cost of doing business like an insurance clawback
 
This was a review I received today. I disagree that all negative reviews are from drug seekers/patients not qualifying. Apparently if a steroid injection hurts and makes the patient bleed this is unacceptable.



"I normally don’t give reviews, but if you read the full review, you will understand why I felt compelled to write this. I visited the office in July. I saw the doctor, he took an X-ray and determined that I had plantar fasciitis, he recommended a cortisone injection. I inquired if this was painful, and his response was that I would feel a pinch and then pressure. He lied.
This was the worse pain I had ever experienced in my entire life and I’m a mother of three.
He left me traumatized. I was in pain and in tears He left the exam room as quickly as he entered.
I am not sure how long he has been in practice but he was extremely uncaring and cold.
I felt like I was just a number.
Fast forward to today, I had seen another doctor years prior and decided to return to his office. He gave me the same cortisone injection in my heel
and I was amazed at the Huge contrast
I had no pain, no blood running down my heel and he made sure I felt comfortable and safe.
I cried today, but it wasn’t because I was in pain
It was because the new Dr took the time to make sure I was cared for."



I have had good outcomes when I send some of these patients a letter threatening legal action for defamation depending on what they write. Sometimes they write things like "malpractice" "fraudulent billing" etc. And I've had all those removed by the patients.

We have tried some emails asking for a review. Essentially if you click the 5* button on the email it re-directs you over to google to leave a review.It seems brilliant but we did not have success with it. It was a little pricey too.

The best way I have found to get reviews is text the patient from a google voice number. I would go through all my patients at the end of the day and text maybe like 1/4 of them a generic "Please leave a review" message with a link to my google reviews. This was the most effective. I should probably keep doing it and I guess will need to after this review. I found that it took about 5 texts to get 1 review. So I would get like 3-5 a week. I've just been lazy lately.
 
Season 1 GIF by The Simpsons
 
Dermato Fight Club said:
This was a review I received today. I disagree that all negative reviews are from drug seekers/patients not qualifying. Apparently if a steroid injection hurts and makes the patient bleed this is unacceptable.



"I normally don’t give reviews, but if you read the full review, you will understand why I felt compelled to write this. I visited the office in July. I saw the doctor, he took an X-ray and determined that I had plantar fasciitis, he recommended a cortisone injection. I inquired if this was painful, and his response was that I would feel a pinch and then pressure. He lied.
This was the worse pain I had ever experienced in my entire life and I’m a mother of three.
He left me traumatized. I was in pain and in tears He left the exam room as quickly as he entered.
I am not sure how long he has been in practice but he was extremely uncaring and cold.
I felt like I was just a number.
Fast forward to today, I had seen another doctor years prior and decided to return to his office. He gave me the same cortisone injection in my heel
and I was amazed at the Huge contrast
I had no pain, no blood running down my heel and he made sure I felt comfortable and safe.
I cried today, but it wasn’t because I was in pain
It was because the new Dr took the time to make sure I was cared for."



I have had good outcomes when I send some of these patients a letter threatening legal action for defamation depending on what they write. Sometimes they write things like "malpractice" "fraudulent billing" etc. And I've had all those removed by the patients.

We have tried some emails asking for a review. Essentially if you click the 5* button on the email it re-directs you over to google to leave a review.It seems brilliant but we did not have success with it. It was a little pricey too.

The best way I have found to get reviews is text the patient from a google voice number. I would go through all my patients at the end of the day and text maybe like 1/4 of them a generic "Please leave a review" message with a link to my google reviews. This was the most effective. I should probably keep doing it and I guess will need to after this review. I found that it took about 5 texts to get 1 review. So I would get like 3-5 a week. I've just been lazy lately.
Click to expand...
My joke about these sort of encounters, other than how ridiculous they are, is that jokingly she probably didn't leave a 5 star review on the other doctors wall. Awhile back I saw a patient who had gone to a competitor about the same problem. They told him he needed to schedule the surgery and get the codes. I don't get it. Doesn't make sense. Whatever. I did his surgery. It went great. He told me it was hilarious how little I was paid for the surgery. It was a pretty good joke, and it would be funnier still if it wasn't my life. Anyway, I was reading people's reviews months later and sure enough he'd left the other doctor a bad review, but of course he didn't leave me a review. I wasn't asking for reviews at the time so that's on me.

My favorite review story is. I did a 1st MPJ fusion + panmet + all toes on a lady with insane rheumatoid. She found me because she was a nurse and saw that I had done the same for another person with rheumatoid. She cried tears of joy at every visit and told me I was amazing. I asked her for a review at her last visit. She told me she'd write one while she hugged me crying. She never did.. Her insurance took forever to process and it turned out she owed us $3000. BCBS had just implemented that new thing where they paid more if surgery was done at an ASC. She never paid. I saw her at a grocery store awhile back - our eyes met. I smiled at her. She hurried away. I guess she thought I'd ask her for the money. At this point I'd settle for the review.
 
On another note, don't let people leave your office bleeding. That comes up disproportionately in reviews. Clean them up. Bandage them. Talk to them about how you've cleaned wherever they bled from and and that they won't get infected.
 
Good call. What is your protocol on how to advise patients on how to reduce infection following a heel pain injection?
 
Dermato Fight Club said:
Good call. What is your protocol on how to advise patients on how to reduce infection following a heel pain injection?
Click to expand...
I don't know if anything was going to save you in the above since apparently you are a heartless monster with a team of lawyers on retainer 😉, but I do discuss steroid flare at Friday visits because I won't be available on Saturday to answer their questions if they call.
 
Dermato Fight Club said:
This was a review I received today. I disagree that all negative reviews are from drug seekers/patients not qualifying. Apparently if a steroid injection hurts and makes the patient bleed this is unacceptable.



"I normally don’t give reviews, but if you read the full review, you will understand why I felt compelled to write this. I visited the office in July. I saw the doctor, he took an X-ray and determined that I had plantar fasciitis, he recommended a cortisone injection. I inquired if this was painful, and his response was that I would feel a pinch and then pressure. He lied.
This was the worse pain I had ever experienced in my entire life and I’m a mother of three.
He left me traumatized. I was in pain and in tears He left the exam room as quickly as he entered.
I am not sure how long he has been in practice but he was extremely uncaring and cold.
I felt like I was just a number.
Fast forward to today, I had seen another doctor years prior and decided to return to his office. He gave me the same cortisone injection in my heel
and I was amazed at the Huge contrast
I had no pain, no blood running down my heel and he made sure I felt comfortable and safe.
I cried today, but it wasn’t because I was in pain
It was because the new Dr took the time to make sure I was cared for."



I have had good outcomes when I send some of these patients a letter threatening legal action for defamation depending on what they write. Sometimes they write things like "malpractice" "fraudulent billing" etc. And I've had all those removed by the patients.

We have tried some emails asking for a review. Essentially if you click the 5* button on the email it re-directs you over to google to leave a review.It seems brilliant but we did not have success with it. It was a little pricey too.

The best way I have found to get reviews is text the patient from a google voice number. I would go through all my patients at the end of the day and text maybe like 1/4 of them a generic "Please leave a review" message with a link to my google reviews. This was the most effective. I should probably keep doing it and I guess will need to after this review. I found that it took about 5 texts to get 1 review. So I would get like 3-5 a week. I've just been lazy lately.
Click to expand...
I always am honest and tell them it’s going to hurt. In my experience PF injections are never a pinch and pressure. They hurt no matter how much TFP wizardry is involved in doing it.

Worst case scenario, it hurts and they are glad you warned them. Best case - it didn’t hurt as much as they thought and you look like a great doc.

If it scares them away from wanting an injection? Well now you can just bill an E&M that pays more than an injection (assuming this is a follow up).
 
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I had a patient who broke their toe at the gym and refused to see anyone and traveled and proceeded to hike for two weeks only to come back with a toe that was crooked. They show up to my practice for their first visit. I told them the toe is quite crooked and I did not feel it would heal or if it did heal they would still have deformity. They deferred surgery at that visit.

They return to clinic 1 month later. The toe is still not healed and there is deformity. I told them to either live with it or fix it. They decide to have it fixed. They sign up for surgery.

Left me a 3 star review...

Sometimes some people/patients are pieces of crap who think doctors are no different than a waiter. It's not my fault you did not seek medical care before you went on vacation and made the injury worse. I am just trying to help.

Whatever.

I am going to fix that toe and when it heals I will say to them on the last visit I hope this experience was better than the 3 stars you gave me online.
 
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