Please note: The HIPAA Privacy Rule regulates the use and disclosure of Protected Health Information (PHI) by medical service providers, among others. Like many user-operated online services, our platform gives you the tools for uploading, gathering and publishing information, and such tools can be used in both compliant and non-compliant ways. Healthcare providers should adopt practices that do not compromise their obligations with respect to PHI under HIPAA.
The expected use of our platform does not violate HIPAA as it does not involve disclosure or use of “protected health information”, defined as personally-identifiable information about a patient’s medical conditions or care. Review requests should therefore not disclose any information about the patient’s health or care. Patients who willingly write reviews for public consumption, either on our platform or via third-party review publishers such as Google and Yelp, have agreed to make that information public with an attribution that they themselves define.
Further, our platform does not store any patient communications except reviews written for public consumption. To reduce the likelihood that patients compromise their own privacy, non-review communications such as contact form submissions are not stored on our platform. They can be collected via an encrypted form and routed through email to an address or addresses you define. You can therefore achieve end-to-end encryption of all patient messages by also using secured email for collection.
Of course, since users have the ability to use our tools to flout these rules, users are ultimately responsible for the patient privacy mandate.
Disclaimer
The materials on this website are provided for informational purposes only and do not constitute legal advice. These materials are intended, but not promised or guaranteed to be current, complete, or up-to-date and should in no way be taken as an indication of future results. Transmission of the information is not intended to create, and the receipt does not constitute, an attorney-client relationship between sender and receiver. The newsletters and articles on this website are offered only for general informational and educational purposes. They are not offered as and do not constitute legal advice or legal opinions. You should not act or rely on any information contained in this website without first seeking the advice of an attorney.
Our medical and dental clients are some of our most successful. Reviews in your industry can have a huge impact on your bottom line, so it’s important to take a proactive approach to your online reputation.
Determine your goals
What specific review sites do you want to focus on? Are you looking to get more reviews on a particular site, improve your overall web presence, catch up with your competition, or improve your rating on a site where you received negative feedback? Do you just want to collect testimonials for your website? Determine what you want, and then set up your landing page, review site links, and campaign accordingly.
Most of our medical clients seek reviews on both major and industry-specific third-party sites, with a primary focus on the former – particularly Google+ and Yelp due to their high traffic and impact on local search results. The steps outlined here follow this protocol.
Are you a larger practice with multiple professionals? You may want to consider setting up a multi-location landing page to cover each professional in your practice.
1) Find your major review site listings across the web.
Once you’ve created your account and logged into your dashboard, automatically search and load in links for your business’ existing listings across the most important major review sites by clicking the Connect a Location button in Dashboard > Funnel > Links > Review Profile.
2) Find your industry-specific review site listings across the web.
While major review sites are the most important for your practice’s SEO and overall reputation, smaller industry-specific review sites are still valuable channels for gathering new customers. You may want to consider creating or seeking and claiming existing listings on the following review sites (we integrate with all of the sites mentioned):
- General Medical/Dental Sites
- Dental sites
- Healthcare Niche Sites
- Thirdage.com (senior women)
- RealSelf (cosmetic)
- SpaFinder/Wellness 365 (alternative medicine/cosmetic)
When setting up your landing page, make sure to highlight the review sites that are most important to you to effectively send your visitors where you want them to go.
3) Collect patient reviews
Medical and dental practices benefit from having stronger and longer-standing relationships with patients than many other businesses have with their customers. Often, directly asking a regular patient to leave you an online review can be effective – and by sending them to your landing page, you ensure that your review ends up where you want it to go. You may find our automated email drip campaigns an effective tool for reaching out to your existing patients (provided that you have their email addresses). Newer patients can also provide valuable feedback, and they are far more likely to leave feedback if their interaction with you is recent. Here are some ideas for asking, reminding, and guiding your patients to your review funnel landing page:
- Include your landing page URL on appointment reminder cards.
- Print your landing page URL or QR code on existing business materials – brochures, etc.
- Have staff directly ask happy patients to leave a review at checkout
- Use our automated email drip campaigns to continuously reach out to new patients
- Embed our landing page widget or ‘Review Us’ button on your website or patient portal (you can find these in Dashboard > Widgets).
4) Optional: monitor your reviews across sites and keep tabs on what people are saying about you
It’s important to take a proactive approach to managing your online reputation. Our optional Review Monitoring add-on allows you to keep an eye on what’s being said about your business across the internet. You’ll receive email alerts whenever you receive a new review on any third-party site listing you’ve loaded into your account, so that you can take quick action if needed.
5) Optional: Embed the Review Stream widget on your practice website
Show potential patients what your existing patients are saying about you across the web with our review stream widget. You can embed our widget on a standalone ‘testimonials’ page or include it on your website’s front page for maximum visibility.
5) Adjust your campaign as needed
Review acquisition is a long-term commitment, and one worth doing above-board and authentically. You may find that the most important review sites for your business change over time. We encourage you to make adjustments as you go. You can re-order, hide, show, edit, and delete your review site links at any time (all of these actions can be performed in Dashboard > Funnel > Links > Your Review Site Links.