Ever since the University of Utah Health system paved the way with online physician reviews several years ago, more hospitals and health systems have seen the value of such a transparency effort and have initiated their own online reviews.
Even if organizations do not offer reviews on their own sites, there are other options for online reviews. While other industries have been using online reviews for quite some time, such reviews are an entirely different matter in healthcare—due to HIPAA.
So how does a healthcare organization better serve its patients with online reviews while also adhering to HIPAA requirements?
- Active reputation management is vital. Even if you aren’t currently using your own online reviews, people are still reviewing your organization elsewhere—social media, Healthgrades, Yelp and many others—so you should already be using a reputation management tool to look for negative reviews. If you don’t currently employ such a tool, look into it soon. The sooner you are aware of negative reviews and can address them appropriately, the better.
- Encourage sharing of positive patient experiences. Whenever you are told of a positive patient experience, ask the person if he/she would be willing to share the experience online. They can do so anonymously. Such requests can be done programmatically with the Get Five Stars tool.
- Handle negative reviews appropriately. You cannot acknowledge publicly that the complainant is/was a patient, nor can you give out any details of a specific incident publicly without violating HIPAA regulations.