Did you know that 74% of patients take online reviews into consideration while choosing a healthcare provider or doctor? Furthermore, three out of four people use medical doctor review websites like ZocDoc, WebMD, and others to find doctors.
Gone are the days when patients solely relied on word-of-mouth referrals to find the best doctor near them. Nowadays, people have access to a world full of information—right at their fingertips. If you’re a doctor looking to attract more and more patients to your practice, you need a solid online presence.
Not sure where to get started? In this blog post, we’ll dive into why reviews matter, which review sites you need to be on, and we’ll share a few tips to help you start gathering more reviews.
Why Reviews Can Make or Break Your Practice
Ever heard of the Netflix Paradox of Choice? Despite Netflix’s AI-powered content recommendations, users sometimes find themselves spending more time on the menus trying to figure out what they want to watch than they do actually watching something.
Having options is a good thing…but having too many options makes it tough to make a decision.
These days, patients have a world full of information at the tip of their fingers. They have more options than ever before—so it makes sense that they spend so much time scrolling through profiles, trying to figure out which provider is right for them.
Whether patients are looking for a general physician or a dermatologist, they’re highly likely to head over to physician review sites like ZocDoc, WebMD, etc. to look up the best doctors near them.
So, reviews help with discovery. But they can also help solidify a final decision.
If a patient’s friend or a family member has recommended a doctor to them, there’s a good chance they’ll look that doctor up on Google or try to find them on doctor-specific review sites like ZocDoc or WebMD. Even with a personal recommendation from a loved one, people want to see social proof that a doctor is trustworthy. Reviews provide that crucial social proof.
Patients want to find doctors with proven track records—someone they can rely on and trust with their health. If you don’t have any reviews but one of your competitors has 1000+ reviews and a 4.8-star rating, potential customers will almost always choose the competitor.
When it comes to online reviews, a patient’s decision-making process is based on the following three aspects:
- Total number of reviews
- Average star rating
- The content of the reviews (what your patients say about you)
So, if you want to win patients, you need to establish your presence across different doctor review sites (we’ve shared the list below), add relevant, up-to-date information about your practice, ask your past patients to share their valuable feedback (you can simplify this process with Podium) and continuously optimize your online profiles for the best possible results.
5 Best Doctor Review Sites You Need to Be on in 2022
Now that we’ve covered the importance of reviews, let’s look at the top five platforms that doctors need to be on in 2022 and beyond.
1. Zocdoc
Zocdoc is a popular doctor review site that allows patients to find specialized, highly rated, in-network providers in no time. Whether they want to find doctors by specialty or availability, Zocdoc also allows patients to narrow down their search with different filters like date, illness, specialty, availability, distance, gender, hospital affiliation, languages spoken, and more.
Patients can go to doctors’ Zocdoc profiles to learn more about them, get their office location, check whether they accept their insurance or not, look at their past patient reviews, book an appointment with them, and more.
Listing your practice on Zocdoc is simple. Click here to get started.
2. WebMD
WebMD is one of the most-viewed review sites and it’s used by 39% of patients. WebMD’s search functionality allows patients to find doctors by name, condition, specialty, procedure, and location. To narrow down their search, patients can apply additional filters like insurance, distance, ratings, and whether they are accepting new patients or not. With hundreds of millions of monthly visits, WebMD is a reliable source for health and wellness information and a great tool for finding medical providers.
Want to list your practice on WebMD? Click here to get started.
3. Healthgrades
Healthgrades is another popular doctor review site that is used by millions of patients and gets over 10 million monthly visits. Patients can use Healthgrades to search doctors and hospitals by name and location, search for providers that treat certain conditions or offer certain procedures, and more. Healthgrades offers accurate and comprehensive information, helping patients get a full picture of doctors’ qualifications.
Patients can apply different filters like rating, distance, specialty, insurance, availability, affiliated facility, telehealth, provider’s gender and age, and language to narrow down their search. They can dive deep into doctors’ experience and history, read reviews, and book an appointment with them by exploring their Healthgrades profiles.
Want to create your Healthgrades profile? Click here to claim your free profile.
4. Vitals
Vitals is one of the largest databases of patient reviews for doctors and facilities—the platform gets more than 3 million monthly visits. Patients can find doctors by specialty, location, insurance, or name. At the same time, they can apply additional filters like search radius, provider gender, languages spoken, profile points, and more.
Vitals Profile Points refer to the overall completeness of a doctor’s profile. They range between 0 and 80. The more information you add to your profile, the higher your profile points will climb.
Patients can select filters like minimum rating, certifications, and more. Patients can learn more about doctors by visiting their profiles where they can find biographies, location information, accepted insurances, services offered, fees, reviews, and more.
Want to get started on Vitals? Click here to claim your free profile.
5. CareDash
CareDash is one of the most popular doctor review sites that patients use to find healthcare providers or hospitals and explore health and insurance resources. CareDash makes it so easy for patients to find the right doctor for them as it allows them to find doctors by name, specialty, condition, practice, and location.
Also, CareDash is laser-focused on providing reliable reviews to patients—every review on the platform goes through a strict approval process. This means that doctors don’t have to worry about spam reviews anymore. Patients can apply filters like distance, ratings, booking information, conditions treated, procedures performed, insurance accepted, specialties, gender, and LGBTQIA to narrow down their search.
Doctors can also sponsor their listings to appear at the top of the CareDash search. Patients can get more information about doctors and thoroughly look at their past patient ratings to know more about the quality of service, helping them make better decisions.
Want to list your practice on CareDash? Click here to get started.
3 Tips You Should Consider to Get More Reviews for Your Medical Practice
Once you’ve created your profiles across different platforms, it’s time to start optimizing. Let’s talk about how to do that.
1. Send Review Invitations via Text Message
With a 98% open rate, text messaging is one of the most effective forms of communication—and patients prefer it. Because patients prefer this communication method, there’s a higher probability that your patients will act when you text them and ask them to leave you a review.
But even though asking for reviews via text is naturally effective, there are still some best practices you should be aware of—not all review requests are created equal.
You need to make it simple for your patients to leave their feedback. You should greet them by name, provide context, and include a link so that leaving a review is quick and easy.
Here’s a template you can use:
“Hello [CONTACT NAME]! We hope you had a great experience with us. We care about your feedback, and we’d appreciate it if you could drop a review on our ZocDoc profile. Click here to share your thoughts: [Link]”
2. Display Your Review Site QR Code Throughout the Clinic.
86% of your patients will be happy to leave you a review when asked to do so. But if most customers are happy to leave a review, why do many practices fail to gather feedback? A poor approach is probably the culprit.
One of the best ways to ask your patients to leave feedback is by displaying your QR code at your front desk or in your reception area. As patients leave, you can ask them to share their valuable feedback by simply scanning the QR code.
3. Delight Your Patients with a Positive Experience
The key to happy patients is a stellar patient experience.
From the moment a patient learns about your practice to the time they receive treatment and beyond, you need to deliver a seamless experience. That’s the only way you can encourage more and more patients to drop their valuable feedback.
Need help improving the patient experience? Check out these resources.
Start Collecting More Reviews with Podium
Reviews help drive decisions and attract more patients to your practice. Podium helps local businesses simplify their review collection process, improve patient communication, and get more done in less time.
Want to learn more? Check out this ShopTalk episode for 9 tips that will help you get more reviews.
