The Online Reputation Management Hack For Healthcare Professionals

Surviving trolls, one positive review at a time

I am a physician. I am also an occasional troll for compliance. Negative reviews in healthcare are common, but unlike Denny’s managers, health professionals are limited in important respects to respond to criticism online.

One of the ways of dealing with this probem, while staying in compliance with all rules and regulations around Healthcare? Become a reviewer of things yourself. Google reviews are potent. The more you leave reviews, the more powerful you become…more than you could possibly imagine. It is a bit like the dark side, hate, and striking people down.

Except it’s the opposite. The more positive reviews colleagues, and, crucially, other things, the more of The Force you can muster.

It is not lawful in most states to respond to patient reviews in a way that exposes protected information. Testimonials by patients also violate applicable legal statutes in NYS, and some (but not all) other states. You also can not solicit those reviews. If you look at fake reviews, it's pretty transparent. Fakers review a bunch of the the same business all at once. They are fake—except they drive algorithms that don't know this. The reverse is also true: by reviewing restaurants, gas stations, whatever, your reviews get flagged as genuine by the algorithms. This helps us push down the spam bots and trolls.