In today’s healthcare marketing trends it has become increasingly important for healthcare providers and medical practitioners to prepare for a digital-first patient experience and a positive reputation online.
According to research:
- 60.8% of consumers don’t go to doctors who have negative reviews on popular doctor rating sites;
- 72% of consumers use reviews on doctor review websites as their first step in the process of choosing a new doctor;
- 69.9% of consumers consider positive doctor reviews as “very” important when making a decision which doctor to pick.
These stats alone show you how crucial online ratings and reviews are today – and that means your practice needs them too if it wants to succeed.
You need an online presence that matches your brand and image – let’s get started.
1) Google My Business (GMB)
Not only is Google the biggest search engine in the world, but they also host a staggering 57.7% of all online reviews.
This is proof that you absolutely need a Google My Business account. In fact, GMB is the most important doctor review site on this list, and if you were forced to pick only one, you’d go with it.
To create your Google profile, visit the Google My Business homepage, click on the blue “Manage Now” button and just follow the prompts from there.
2) Yelp
Nowadays, Yelp is known for its restaurant reviews and profiles, but the whole idea for the site came about when the founder, Jeremy Stoppelman, got the flu and couldn’t find a decent doctor in his vicinity using Google search.
A brilliant idea was born on that day, and nowadays, Yelp features more than 214 million reviews and 9% of those are reviews on various healthcare organizations.
This factoid tells you you need to be present there as web users do use Yelp to find doctors near them.
To claim a Yelp profile go to the Yelp for Business Owners page.
Then click on the “Manage My Free Listing Button” and take it from there.
3) Healthgrades
Ever since 1998 when the site started its online journey Healthgrades has consistently ranked as one of the best and most trusted doctor review websites.
This site allows web users to browse their database and find hospitals, doctors, dentists, and specialists by condition, speciality, procedure and location.
Healthgrades features more than 1.1 million health provider profiles and more than seven million genuine and verified doctor ratings and reviews.
To open up your free Healthgrades profile, go to their homepage and scroll nearly to the bottom where you’ll see the red “Claim Your Profile” button.
‘Click it and follow the prompts from there.
4) CareDash
CareDash is one of the world’s leading providers of the hospital, doctor, dentist, and therapist reviews.
The site was started in 2016 as a solution for patients looking for trustworthy information about hospitals, practices, and healthcare providers in their area.
2016 is not that long ago, and yet, CareDash has since become one of the largest and still one of the fastest-growing medical doctor review websites in the world.
More than 2 million patients regularly visit CareDash every single month to look for legitimate and unbiased doctor reviews.
The site hosts millions of verified patient reviews and over 3 million active hospital and healthcare provider profiles.
It’s a good move to claim a profile on CareDash, and to do it, go to their CareDash for Doctors portal, and then take it from there.
5) Wellness.com
Wellness.com, in addition to hosting healthcare profiles, also features multiple resources for all kinds of medical information in the form of interactive visitor surveys and wellness blogs.
Wellness.com health providers profiles include doctor reviews and ratings, certification, valid payment methods, and accepted forms of insurance, and more.
To be listed on Welness.com you need to enroll in their Wellness Provider Program.
There are three tiers here:
- Verified;
- Enhanced;
- Featured.
Verified is the most limited and not suitable for anyone looking to actually get leads from this site.
Enhanced is much better because it removes the no-index tag from your profile, and this lets it index in Google and other search engines so you can be found there.
Finally, Featured is the best option because it gives you visibility on your competitor’s profile which is perfect for stealing leads from them.
And remember that if they purchase the Featured tier, while you’re on one of the lower ones, they’ll be stealing business from you day and night.
So if you’re going to be making a listing on Welness.com I strongly suggest you go for Featured.
Yes, it’s more expensive but it’ll pay for itself if it gets new business through your door.
6) ZocDoc
ZocDoc is one of the smaller doctor review sites on this list. However, it is still a trusted review source for many web users and it pays to have a presence there.
Within ZocDoc, patients can book appointments, fill out basic forms which serve as a replacement for the typical waiting room experience, and they can leave their doctor reviews for other site users to read about their experience, positive or negative.
To claim your profile on ZocDoc go to the site’s “Get Started” page and take it from there.
7) RateMDs
RateMDs hosts over 2.5 million doctor profiles and they also provide their users with medical specialties information and current health trends coverage (such as the Corona pandemic).
They also list and rate top hospitals across the US for their cleanliness and overall value and these ratings are based on aggregated review information from their users.
For individual health providers, users can rate based on the helpfulness of the staff, punctuality, and overall knowledge and service provided.
To claim your RateMD profile, simply click on the “Claim Doctor Profile” on the top right of the site’s home page.
8) Doctor.com
Doctor.com is a platform that gives you access to multiple healthcare networks at once. The site gives you reach to an audience of about 30 million people per month on popular business review sites like Google, Bing, Yelp, Healthline, and Vitals,
They also let you create and display a profile on their own property.
The value of signing up for Doctor.com is that you get shown not only on Doctor.com but also on the popular review platforms mentioned above.
So in a way, signing up for Doctor.com enables you not to sign up for several others. Though I still recommend you establish a solid presence of all 12 top doctor review sites on this list.
With your listing on Doctor.com you also get access to online review management tools, a dedicated page on their domain for your practice, and experienced consultants to help you get the most of it.
To open your Doctor.com profile, go to their homepage and click on the “Get Started” button.
9) Dr. Oogle
Dr. Oogle is a doctor review site that specializes in hosting dentist profiles and reviews.
Each profile includes office hours, videos, photos, and previously left reviews by other customers.
Site users can leave their feedback and an overall rating while also being able to rate their experience based on multiple factors such as results, cost, and hygiene.
If you’re a dentist and wish to open a profile of your practice, then you can easily do it with your Google account, Facebook profile or email address.
10) RealPatientsRatings
RealPatientRatings specialize in hosting plastic surgeon’s profiles and currently boasts more than 300,000 verified reviews from patients who completed a qualified visit to a doctor’s office.
This is probably the world’s largest database of genuine reviews of plastic surgeons from real patients in the world.
RealPatientRatings visitors can filter the reviews by specific treatments or providers.
If you’re a plastic surgeon and you want to sign up and open a profile on RealPatientRatings you can do it by visiting Vizium360 and going from there.
11) RealSelf
RealSelf is a niche doctor review site that specializes in publishing information on cosmetic treatments and they host more than 20,000 physician profiles and more than 10 million web users (think; potential leads) visit this site every month looking for their next plastic surgeon.
Patients use the site through their “Treatment Finder” tool which lets them comb through profiles
displaying matches based on the keywords they typed.
Because of the nature of this tool, if you’re a plastic surgeon and want visibility in this space, then you need to bulk up your profile with every bit of info they let you input.
On your profile page, you can list the standard stuff such as your address, phone, time of operation, etc…
but you can also list any ongoing deals and promotions, and you can even have a dedicated QNA section to answer the queries you suspect potential leads have.
Make sure you fill this section with plenty of relevant keywords:)
12) Vitals
Unlike RealSelf, Vitals is not a niche doctor rating site.
In fact, they’re one of the largest and most popular doctor review sites on this list.
Vitals hosts more than one million physician profiles, more than 170 000 medical faculty profiles, and more than 9 million genuine reviews from verified customers.
Their database lets users search by specialty, insurance, location, condition, and even by name.
Vitals get their information from a wide variety of sources, both private and public.
This includes medical boards from hospitals, doctor surveys, all 50 states data, federal sites, and third-party affiliates.
To claim a Vitals profile for your practice, first, you need to search for the specific practice you’d like to be listed under on the site.
Once you find it, click the “Claim This Profile” link from your profile page.
Once your profile is claimed you’ll be able to manage and update info such as name, address, telephone, hour of operations, education, awards…
Best Practices for Having a Healthy Profile on Doctor Review Sites
It’s not enough to just keep an open profile on popular doctor review sites.
Instead, you need to groom them so they actually help upkeep your reputation and aid in growing your business.
Here are 3 simple best practices to follow.
- Regularly Update Your Information
The first thing you need to do is regularly update your profiles on all doctor review sites that you care about.
Why?
Because incorrect and incomplete profiles give off a bad impression to potential customers.
They make the user think badly about an organization that can’t even keep their profile up to date, let alone guard and improves their precious health.
- Monitor Your Online Reputation
As an organization trying to present themselves in the best light you need to know what normal web users see when they land on your profile on any of these 12 top doctor review sites.
You need to know because the impression you make will either give or not give a new lead for your business, and if there’s something horrible there (like a whole lot of really bad reviews) it might even damage your online reputation.
The best way to prevent trouble is to be proactive and regularly check up on your profiles.
- Respond to Reviews (and Fast too)
It is very important to promptly respond to reviews you get on doctor review sites.
On positive ones you can say thank you and it’ll show you pay attention to them.
As a pro tip, you can always ask “what can we do better?”.
This will get the satisfied customer talking and you can use their input to really make your practice better.
Plus, happy customers who got to engage with you will become your brand ambassadors and will spread the word about your business left and right, without you even asking them to do it.
You also need to respond to negative reviews, and this is even more important than responding to positive ones.
Because a dissatisfied person that leaves a review and you ignore them hoping it’ll go away like a bad dream, often turns bitter and starts saying nasty stuff about your health practice both online and offline.
That is the negative publicity you don’t want and the good news is that it’s easily preventable.
Simply respond in a calm fashion, reiterate how you want to help them, and get them to calm down, and give them another, private way of contacting you.
What you don’t want is to respond aggressively with curse words, which will only ignite them even further.
You also can’t share their medical info in public.
That is not HIPAA compliant and will get your practice fined.
Instead, redirect them to a private channel and take it from there.
Yes, it’s a lot of work but that‘s what’s needed to stand out among your competitors.
Conclusion
Just opening up profiles on major doctor reviews sites is a good first step, but it’s definitely not enough.
It’s also not enough if you just populate them with info about your company and let it sit.
Instead, you need to provide top-notch service to your existing customers. This will push some of them to leave you positive reviews and your online reputation will start to develop.
And as you start getting reviews and you start responding to them, you’ll build a bank of positive social proof which will hugely contribute to growing your business.
It’s possible, it will happen for your practice, but it all starts with opening profiles on these 12 best doctor review sites I reviewed above.
Cheers!
