What If My Imaging Center Gets a Bad Review Online?

It’s a healthcare practice’s nightmare; to learn that a disgruntled or disappointed patient has left a bad review online.  As an imaging center, you attempt to provide top notch patient care to everyone that comes through your door, but no matter what, you might still meet a patient who is just hard to please.

Regardless of how well your staff treats your patients, they can develop a negative opinion of your imaging center. They can become disgruntled for a number of reasons that you can manage, but there are some ways patients can become frustrated that are out of your control.

Patient Experiences You Can Control

Feeling Welcomed – With a Smile

Clean, Comfortable Waiting Area

Easily Accessible Contact Information

Convenient Access to Patient Records

Patient Experiences You Can’t Control

Longer Wait Times – Due to External Delays

Frustration/Pain Based on Patient Ailment

Patients with Bad Attitudes

High Care/Procedure Costs

Read More: Why Your Healthcare Practice Needs Social Media

So, what do you do if a patient leaves a negative review of your imaging center on Facebook or Yelp? Or, what if a patient tweets something negative to you? How do you handle it?

How To Handle Bad Reviews on Social Media:

Step 1: Don’t delay. Be sure to respond quickly to reviews so you can take control of the situation before it has the chance to snowball into a bigger issue. Even if the bad review is in fact warranted, you can still salvage the situation with an appropriate response.

Step 2: Determine if the complaint is based on something you could control making it warranted, or if the complaint is something that doesn’t have to do with the quality of your service. Ex: “The front desk girl was very rude and was playing on her cell phone while I waited at the desk.” This is something you can fix as opposed to a review that reads, “I’ve been in pain for months so I tried to schedule an MRI at this imaging center but they wouldn’t give me an appointment unless I was referred by a doctor.”  We know that in radiology, diagnostic testing requires a script, but some patients may not know that. So, while you can’t change this fact, you can do a better job of explaining this to patients and giving them advice on what to do next.

Step 3: Always be sympathetic, no matter what. An apology isn’t always warranted if the patient’s negative review is unwarranted. Sometimes people just complain to complain but even if they are wrong, you need to show empathy in your response.

Step 4: Offer some kind of solution or compromise. You can’t erase the past and you can’t refund patients for their care, but that doesn’t mean you can’t offer some kind of solution. Sometimes, the best thing you can do is provide the patient with the contact information of your marketing representative or office manager so they can speak directly with a person who might be able to help them. This is also an opportunity to do some further investigating to see if this can be a learning opportunity for your practice.   

Some things to remember with regards to online patient reviews:

1.     Just because you don’t think you have a Facebook page for your practice, doesn’t mean there isn’t a location listing on Facebook where patients can check in and write reviews. You must take ownership of your business’ page and merge the listing page to control it. You can’t control a Facebook listing but you can control a business page!

2.     People are most likely to leave a review of their healthcare providers when they either have an extraordinarily positive or extraordinarily negative experience. You won’t often get people who say that their experience was just okay. Focus on branding your patient experience so it is something worth talking about in a positive light.

3.     Sometimes a negative review with a strong, helpful response from the practice is more influential than a positive review. As a patient, seeing that someone from a practice would go out of their way to make amends for a negative experience shows that they are willing to go above and beyond for their patients.

Read More: Why You Need to Brand Your Practice’s Patient Experience

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Why Your Radiology Practice Needs a Social Media Strategy

Many radiology groups think social media in the medical field is a waste of time, but we're here to tell you why that just isn't the case. Your practice needs a social media strategy for a number of reasons, but to excel in radiology marketing you don't even have to do much. Healthcare providers are accepting that health care social media is a necessity, but your competition may not yet be on board. 

Let's look at some reasons why your practice needs a social media strategy:

1.     Because it's the best way to reach consumer-driven patients…

Your mother might say, “if Johnny and everyone else was jumping off a bridge, would you do it too?” In this case, your answer should be a resounding, “YES MOM, I’M JUMPING AND I LEFT MY PARACHUTE AT HOME.” Doctors, hospitals and specialists all over the country are using their Facebook business pages to reach patients, so radiology practices must get on board. Patients are turning to Twitter as well, thanks to the Health Care Hashtag project brought to you by Symplur, making weekly tweet chats and hashtags trend within the industry.

2.     Because Search Engine Optimization is your key to success…

SEO practices help your website rank higher for patients searching certain keywords. Want to be the first website to show up when they search for “best doctor in Tampa?” Well, you’ll have to work for it.  New SEO practices have shown that more weight is being put on your social sites.  This means, if you have patients providing reviews and sharing your posts with their friends, you will be in a better position for patients looking online for practices like yours.

3.     Because older people are really into “The Facebook”…

My most active Facebook friend is 100% my Grandma. She “Likes” and shares every post I make, no matter what it is about. She “Likes” every local business she is a patron for, including her doctors.  Specialists like radiologists have a largely elderly patient population, but they assume they aren’t reliable for social engagement. That just couldn’t be further from the truth, especially when it comes to “The Facebook,” as my grandma calls it.

4.     Because you can use Twitter to reach the unreachable…

PR pros don’t tell you this secret openly, but Twitter is the most affordable and easiest way to reach your local media.  Industry leaders, community influencers and news reporters are all over Twitter. You can open lines of communication with them and then when they have the chance to highlight you or use you as a resource, you’ll be ready.

5. Because people like to complain…

People are much more inclined to share negative experiences than positive ones. Let’s face it, by nature, we like to whine and complain. Often, your disgruntled patients will turn to social sites like Facebook, Google Places or Yelp to air your dirty laundry.  If you don’t manage your pages, you can’t defend your practice, correct the situation and improve the patient’s impression of you. Care doesn’t end when your patients walk out the door; you need to be accessible to them.

Read More: What If My Practice Gets a Bad Review on Facebook

Why You Need to Brand Your Practice’s Patient Experience

Many practices can identify with the terrifying moment when you get an email from Yelp saying that your practice has received a new review. You’re sitting in your office chair, hanging in the balance of either honor or shame. Did a patient write complimentary comments about your service and how much they loved your practice or did they leave a scathing review saying how rude your office staff was to them?  It’s challenging to manage negative reviews, especially in the instances where the patient was upset over something you could not control. People are exponentially more likely to provide feedback on something they either absolutely love or absolutely loathe, while the likelihood of comments coming from someone who had an “okay” experience is very low.

This means, you need to take every effort to provide each patient with a flawless experience to promote more positive reviews. The best way to do so is to brand your patient experience. Adding small touch-points to your patient process can make a huge difference in perception. Simple changes such as personally introducing a patient to each staff member they will meet with, can go a long way. Additionally, you could exchange paper robes for terry cloth ones or give patients slippers to protect their feet from chilly floors in the winter.

Things like that are what people remember when they leave your office. If they had to wait an extra 15 minutes because your schedule was running behind, then have coupons available as an apology. Whenever you travel Southwest Airlines for instance, if your flight gets delayed they offer complimentary adult beverages as collateral. (You’re not alone if you find yourself wishing for a flight delay every once in a while.)

To elicit positive responses, you can recruit the help of your staff. It likely happens everyday, that a patient says something positive in passing about their time at your practice. You can take those opportunities to remind patients that they can go online and review your practice.

You might think that websites like Yelp, Facebook and Google’s review pages don’t matter, but patients are becoming increasingly better consumers of their own care. They are turning to the Internet to find information on their physicians, treatments and procedures.   In some statistics provided by Fluency Media, it was determined that 85% of Millennials and 78% of Baby Boomers are searching for health topics online. Take the appropriate steps to improve your patient experience while promoting positive reviews and you will be able to capture the attention of more patients and improve your reach!