Guest post by Whitney Gibson, JD
It is no secret that countless people turn to the internet prior to making decisions regarding products or services—including those provided by medical practitioners. In fact, according to Software Advice’s 2013 survey of more than 4,500 Americans, 62% used online reviews when seeking a new physician.
Whether you currently are practicing medicine or are just getting your feet wet in medical school, being conscious of your reputation and working to maintain good credibility in your profession is critical.
As an internet defamation attorney who has handled cases involving physicians, I wanted to offer some tips for protecting your online reputations and clarify why this is important.
Significance of Maintaining a Positive Online Reputation
Even if you are still in medical school or not yet interacting much with patients, maintaining a clean reputation is crucial because it is important to build up a good name before you begin to practice. Realize that you cannot assume anything you do online is going to remain private. And also realize that what you do offline (both good and bad), can quickly make it online.
Of course, once you begin working as a physician you are more in the public eye. A patient or potential patient can check you out on any of dozens of websites where physicians are reviewed or rated, including Vitals.com, which has listings of more than 700,000 physicians.
According to survey results recently published in the Journal of the American Medical Association, 59% of respondents reported physician rating websites were “very important” or “somewhat important” to them when selecting a physician. Meanwhile, 35% reported choosing a physician based on good ratings, while 37% avoided those with bad ratings.
A major problem is that most physicians have a limited number of reviews, which gives rise to a sampling bias. According to a Healthcare IT News article, 75% of 200 randomly selected physicians had fewer than three “cumulative reviews” on Google’s first page of search results.
The fewer reviews a physician has, the more damaging a false one can be. An angry person is more likely to be motivated to post a review online, and he or she may not even be a patient. We have seen negative reviews posted, for example, by drug addicts upset after being denied prescriptions; medical malpractice claimants; competitors; extortionists trying to get refunds or avoid paying medical bills; and disgruntled employees.
Steps Physicians Can Take to Overcome the Impact of Online Reputation Attacks
Even the world’s greatest physician is likely to have at least one critic (and, again, one bad review among a small sample size could prove harmful), so it is important to take steps to overcome bad reviews.
Ideally, a physician will be proactive and implement the following steps to protect their online reputations (explained in more detail below) before negative reviews can do any harm:
Eliminate the sampling bias with a review program
Monitor for online reputation attacks; and
Assemble the appropriate team to help respond to reputation attacks
First, it is beneficial to have software or a strategic plan in place to encourage patients to leave legitimate (but not fake) positive reviews. For instance, there are programs that make it easy for offices to provide patients with a link after their appointments to provide feedback online. Some hospitals have begun soliciting and posting physician ratings on their own websites, so their reviews appear atop search engine results. By having an increased number and more visible positive reviews, this can mitigate the impact of negative reviews online.
Next, physicians should consider purchasing monitoring software – which is easy to purchase and not expensive – to keep an eye on what is being said about them. There are dozens of websites where physicians can be rated or reviewed, thus making it impractical to individually search each website regularly for potential harmful reviews. Many times, a bad review can be resolved quickly and inexpensively when it is found and addressed within a few weeks. Further, if a physician discovers a critical, but not defamatory, review, he or she physician can take the constructive criticism and fix the issues.
Finally, it is beneficial to assemble the right team of experts – often consisting of cyber investigators, PR professionals and defamation attorneys – for when a disparaging review is found and harms a physician’s reputation. Each potentially defamatory review is unique and, thus, the solutions are fact-dependent. A multidisciplinary team of legal, cyber investigation and PR experts can offer a variety of techniques to help physicians negate online reputation attacks, such as a defamatory review on a physician rating website. This team must have legal knowledge relating to HIPAA and defamation laws.
Whether you are on the verge of a medical career, or have been practicing for years, your online reputation matters. Even if you presently have favorable ratings and an overall positive online reputation, do not assume you are immune from defamatory reviews online.
Whitney Gibson is partner and leader of the internet defamation group in the Cincinnati office of Vorys, Sater, Seymour and Pease LLP. For more information, contact Whitney Gibson at 855.542.9192 or wcgibson@vorys.com. Read more about the practice at http://www.defamationremovalattorneys.com and http://www.defamationremovalattorneysblog.com, and follow Whitney on Twitter at @WhitneyCGibson.
Join Our Email ListEmail:
For Email Marketing you can trust