How to Ask Patients for Reviews in Four Steps

As a doctor or medical practitioner, your reputation is everything. Before patients entrust you with their health, it’s likely they’ll first want to find out a little more about you—and reviews are usually the first place they’ll look.

In fact, a study conducted by Bright Local discovered that 89% of medical and healthcare patients look at industry reviews, with participants also naming medical/healthcare as the industry where reviews are the most important. This just highlights the integral role online reviews play driving practice growth.

Ultimately, more positive reviews translates into more patients and more revenue, so it makes sense that asking patients for reviews should form part of your online marketing strategy—and here’s how to do it…

Four Best Tips on How to Ask Patients for Reviews 

1. Work out which customers to ask

While some negative reviews can’t be avoided, you can encourage more positive reviews by being selective about which patients you ask.

It’s generally a good strategy to start off by asking your regular customers, as they’ve clearly had a good enough experience on previous visits to come back. Once you’ve built a solid base of reviews and rectified any issues identified from the feedback, you should be safe to start asking a wider cohort of your patients.

2. Ask for a review while they’re still in-clinic

There are lots of ways to ask for reviews, but asking patients face-to-face while they’re still in-clinic is ideal. It’s personable and gets them to think about their experience while it’s still fresh in their mind. 

Reception staff can ask patients to quickly fill out a review on a tablet or device or give patients a card with the URL they can use to complete a review at a later time. Another approach is for the individual that’s built the strongest rapport with the patient (usually the doctor or clinician) to ask for the review, as this may make the patient more willing to assist.

Whichever model you decide to go with, it’s beneficial to do some in-house training on how to ask for patient reviews to ensure consistency throughout the practice. 

3. Follow-up with an email

While it’s great for patients to complete a review on-the-spot, it’s not always possible. Even if a patient agrees (and intends) to complete a review at a later time, it can easily slip their mind. 

Sending a quick email reminder including a link to complete a review the day after their appointment will jog their memory and encourage them to follow through. 

4. Make it standard practice

Another interesting fact uncovered by the Bright Local survey was that 73% of customers only pay attention to reviews written in the last month, highlighting the importance of regularly asking for reviews to keep them fresh and plentiful.

Need some help getting your patient review strategy off the ground? We can help! 

At MD Logica, we’re experts in online reputation management for medical practices and can show you exactly what you need to do to build your online presence and find more patients.

Contact us to find out how.