Online Reputation Management for Your Medical Practice

Dr. Tom Hopkins: Welcome to prescriptions for your practice, a podcast by doctors for doctors. Here, we delve into game-changing approaches to patient care, practice management, and well-being, brought to you by Hill Physicians Medical Group. I’m Dr. Tom Hopkins, independent physician and your host in this unique journey. Well, I’m thrilled to be able to participate in this podcast, first one for Hill Physicians Medical Group, and I really wanna welcome you to our program, Dr. Dheeraj Kamra. Tell me more about yourself and your practice.

Dr. Dheeraj Kamra: Well, thank you so much for having me. I mean, I’m having the time of my life today. This is the first podcast I’ve ever done. And, you know, and congratulations and, you know, thank you to Hill Physicians for initiating this. I don’t think any other IPA does this.

Dr. Tom Hopkins: Not at all. So kudos to Hill Physicians for taking this initiative. Again, my name is Dr. Kamra. First name, Dheeraj. Dheeraj Kamra.

Dr. Dheeraj Kamra: I am internal medicine. I have an office in Carmichael right by Mercisa and Juan, internal medicine. I also have an inpatient practice. So I run, you know, hospitalist programs at Wibra Hospital in Folsom and Sacramento Rehab Hospital, which is a brand new hospital started just last year. So, yeah, that keeps me busy, and, you know, internal medicine is my passion.

Dr. Tom Hopkins: We’ve been practicing, in practice actually since 2006. Awesome. Well, welcome. It’s great to be here. You know, I’m really excited about talking about this topic, something I think that’s near and dear to a lot of physicians’ hearts, and that’s reputation management.

Dr. Dheeraj Kamra: So could you just start off telling me, and for our listeners and viewers, what is reputation management? What does that mean?

Dr. Tom Hopkins: Well, I mean, as you know, in this day and age, you know, there’s no yellow pages. Right? So everybody who’s going to look for a doctor is gonna go on the web, and online presence is extremely important.

Dr. Dheeraj Kamra: Right, so you do need to have a website and the website needs to be, of course, you know, modern and with relevant information. And then we have all these social media sites like Facebook, Yelp, and Google where, you know, people go and put on their reviews. So that’s why reputation management is important because that creates a brand for you. That’s what people are looking for when they are searching your name or searching for any internal medicine doctor. If you’re top on that list in terms of your reputation, then people, you know, sort of, trust that.

Dr. Tom Hopkins: And they think that, you know, you know, this person is a good doctor and reliable and they’ve got nice reviews. You know, maybe I should go there. The same thing as we go for looking for a restaurant to have lunch or dinner.

Dr. Dheeraj Kamra: Sure. Yeah.

Dr. Tom Hopkins: Right? You have a 5-star review, then, yeah, you feel safe. Mhmm. Right? Nobody’s gonna give you food poisoning.

Dr. Dheeraj Kamra: Right? Absolutely. Exactly. You know, I’m gonna ask you, when you look at what you’ve been doing in your practice reputation, man, could you tell me what do you do? What does that mean for you now that you’ve defined it?

Dr. Tom Hopkins: You know, so it has been an ongoing education on my own end. Right? So it’s not like it’s a cookie-cutter approach. You cannot just do that. You cannot only rely upon companies only.

Dr. Dheeraj Kamra: You have to do your own part here. Right? So there are 2 approaches. You can get a company to manage some of the aspects of that, but you have to train your people. You have to have a proper, you know, a protocol set up for that.

Dr. Tom Hopkins: So, immediately, you know, so, like, so first of all, as the patient is hitting the office, you have to have, you know, courteous staff. Right? For sure. So who are, paying attention to the needs of the patients. And, of course, then you yourself are interacting with the patient, so you have to have a proper, you know, approach and, you know, make sure that you satisfy their needs and take care of them.

Dr. Dheeraj Kamra: And then also as they’re leaving out, you know, then they have their referral appointments, etcetera, and lab appointments. So every step of the way, you have to make sure that you’re doing the right thing and, you know, taking care of the patient. So I think that’s, you know, if you have all those steps in process, I think, you know, eventually, the thing becomes easy. Having a person identified in the office who’s gonna be managing, and looking out for the reviews, and responding to them appropriately. If there’s a negative review or if there’s not even a negative review, if there’s a patient calling in for some dissatisfaction and you address it right away, then it does not become a negative review.

Dr. Tom Hopkins: Right? So it’s an ongoing process, you know. It’s not like one and be done. You have to do it on a daily basis.

Dr. Dheeraj Kamra: Yeah. I found that in my practice the same thing. It’s just you have to, be aware. It has to be something you have a focus on. And so in your case, you have, have you just relied on a company to do it for you to do, you know, it’s ongoing, manage that online presence and reputation? What do you think works best for you and your practice?

Dr. Tom Hopkins: I think most important is internal, what we do in our office. That is the most important thing. Because you have all these websites, reputation.com and etcetera, you know, who will take care of the negative views. I don’t know whether they work as effectively if your internal, you know, protocols are not there. If internally you’re all been broken, then it’s not gonna work.

Dr. Dheeraj Kamra: Right? So that’s the most important part. You can have a company manage it. You know, they can do their blogs. You know, they can, the company can, create social media advertising and whatnot.

Dr. Tom Hopkins: But the, the review that will come from internal interaction.

Dr. Dheeraj Kamra: Right? So we have to have that in place, like it’s like, you know, all the tiles need to be put properly internally.

Dr. Tom Hopkins: Exactly. I think that’s the most important thing.

Dr. Dheeraj Kamra: And that’s a challenge. You know, a lot of private practices, are short-staffed.

Dr. Tom Hopkins: Right.

Dr. Dheeraj Kamra: Right? And then there’s a staff turnover.

Dr. Tom Hopkins: And so you’re constantly training. So, you know, that process, if it is, you know, tightened up to a certain degree on a constant basis, then you are golden.

Dr. Dheeraj Kamra: Yeah. But I think it’s a process.

Dr. Tom Hopkins: Yeah.

Dr. Dheeraj Kamra: You know, for my practice, I always think about, no matter if my staff is changing, you know, I need my reputation to be there. It’s going to be there. So having an interest in making sure that, you know, I’m doing what I can to monitor that. Do you have any policies that you have that help guide your staff on how to pay attention to reputation management?

Dr. Tom Hopkins: Well, we did create a policy protocol and procedure, and, you know, it has all the steps outlined, you know, respond appropriately and be courteous, be respectful, respond to the phone calls, answer the phone calls, you know, in a timely manner within 24 hours. So that you know, you have to have that. That’s definite.

Dr. Dheeraj Kamra: Yeah. And I find in my practice one of the key things was, interesting is to respond very quickly to comments, especially negative. Now I wanna get into that because I think that’s another thing that’s very important and on the minds of a lot of docs. Right? You know, how do you with reputation management, how do you deal with the negative comments? And so what’s your experience with doing that?

Dr. Tom Hopkins: Well, of course, you know, as with positive comments, you know, negative comments will happen. And, most importantly, you have to respond to them in a timely manner.

Dr. Dheeraj Kamra: So once you can identify a patient, of course, you don’t put anybody’s name outside on the website.

Dr. Tom Hopkins: Yeah. That has to be very careful. So you call them right away and answer. I’ve had patients who complained that they were given LabCorp requisition instead of a Quest requisition, and then I got a bill.

Dr. Dheeraj Kamra: Yeah. You know? So but, you know, sometimes these things are not in your control.

Dr. Tom Hopkins: Right? And so that, you know, if you respond to them appropriately in a timely manner, I think we can mitigate them, and they have gone back.

Dr. Dheeraj Kamra: The patients have gone back and taken the review down.

Dr. Tom Hopkins: Yeah. Yeah. You know, it’s interesting. I found out, I’ve learned more from a negative online review than I did from a lot of the positive ones. So tell me, do you have a story where you think that that was great value? I think you’re alluding it to it just then, but were there was a negative comment that you knew about. It was even if it’s anonymous. How that changed something that you were doing in your office.

Dr. Dheeraj Kamra: Mhmm. I mean, you know, the same comment that I mentioned earlier about the lab requisition. So I called that patient right away as soon as because I have these emails, you know, come to my own phone. So I keep an eye on it right away. You gotta take care of it yourself. So I responded to that email right away. I said, you know, so and so, you know, I apologize. You know, this thing happened, and we will take care of it next morning. You know, sometimes it is just, you know, the code. The code may not be put properly, and the patient got a bill. So I do not know what had happened at that time when they got the, you know, I got the bill, you know, the lab requisition. So yeah. So I respond appropriately right away and try to take care of it. You know? And I call the patient myself. I don’t think you can rely upon a staff member.

Dr. Tom Hopkins: Yeah. You know, maybe in some cases, it may work fine. But in my case, you know, I feel like I feel responsible. Yeah. Especially when you think about the practice.

Dr. Dheeraj Kamra: For me, I think about it’s me as the owner, practice owner, and I should be that leader in the practice to answer some of these things. And sometimes, frankly, some of our staff may be put in an uncomfortable position to answer some of these questions. I want to ask you one question because I’ve been this has come up. What about a really negative review that almost borders on, you know, defaming, you know, defamation. Right? So what do you do to that?

Dr. Tom Hopkins: Well, I mean, any review, you have to go online right away and put it under the comment as a reply that, you know, we do everything possible to help you. And I’m sorry you had this experience, and I wish I can make it happen that way, you know, I could correct it. Give me the opportunity to correct it.

Dr. Dheeraj Kamra: Right? So that’s all you can do. Sometimes people are not very clear, but they don’t give any specifics.

Dr. Tom Hopkins: Yeah. Right. Right?

Dr. Dheeraj Kamra: So but your obligation is to respond to it in a timely manner and say, you know, we are here to help you. You know, we are also human beings and, you know, stuff can happen, mistakes can happen, and we are here to correct it. And I think that’s very important.

Dr. Tom Hopkins: You know, first of all, with reputation management that we could do in our practice, we could set the expectations for the patients right up front. Let them know about that. But you’re right. You know, I had a colleague. Here’s when I tell you the story. I had a colleague who got a negative review and told me how they were gonna respond and kind of fight back. And then I made the comment, and I figured you probably understand that. What would you say to that? To a colleague who says fight back? They’re fighting back. What would you do?

Dr. Dheeraj Kamra: I don’t think that’s gonna work. It’s gonna backfire. There’s no point in fighting. This is not Twitter.

Dr. Tom Hopkins: Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. It’s true.

Dr. Dheeraj Kamra: Yeah. You know, and yeah. These are if that’s a real review, that’s your patient. That’s your livelihood. That’s your bread and butter.

Dr. Tom Hopkins: Yeah. Right? So you gotta take care of it in a professional manner. You don’t wanna be unprofessional there.

Dr. Dheeraj Kamra: Yeah. And, you know, for my comment to, my colleague was, you know, speak your truth, really. You know, say this is what you do, that you strive to do all these things that are positive, and you really have to turn that negative kind of into a positive.

Dr. Tom Hopkins: Where’s the places you look for?

Dr. Dheeraj Kamra: I mean Yelp and Google search.

Dr. Tom Hopkins: And then you’ll follow?

Dr. Dheeraj Kamra: And then health grades.

Dr. Tom Hopkins: And health grades. Right. So you would do the same process, no matter where it’s at, with your response. Right?

Dr. Dheeraj Kamra: Because that’s why I’m hearing you say that you would repeat the truth, say what you’re supposed to do. How you know, one of my colleagues said to me, well, you know, I didn’t do anything wrong, so why am I gonna say I’m sorry? I apologize. What would you say to that?

Dr. Tom Hopkins: I mean, you’re not saying that you are sorry because you did something wrong. You are sorry because the patient had a bad experience. And so that’s why you’re trying to, you know, sort of fix that.

Dr. Dheeraj Kamra: Mhmm. So I think there’s a little difference in there.

Dr. Tom Hopkins: Mhmm.

Dr. Dheeraj Kamra: When you get back to what this whole reputation management, that’s really what it is. It’s harder to recover from a bad reputation than it is to maintain a good one. And so having that presence online is important to maintaining a good reputation. What I’m hearing you saying is the monitoring it and responding to it appropriately and quickly. How do you get those positive reviews to kind of percolate to the top, if you will? Do you have any strategy or thoughts about that?

Dr. Tom Hopkins: One thing I ask my staff to do is as soon as the patient is at the checkout desk, give them the iPad to review. Because then they usually have a good experience, right? I mean they keep on coming back and you know, so they usually 90% of the time it’s a good experience. So if you want to have that experience out in the public, you’ve got to have it done right away while in the office.

Dr. Dheeraj Kamra: So we do, you know, surveys on the patients and those surveys can go outside onto the website. So they call it a verified survey.

Dr. Tom Hopkins: Right. Right. Because, you know, again, when we’re asking the voice of the patients, you know, at the same time, we want it to be anonymous. Right? So you keep on get you keep on, telling them, you know, you’re surveying them. But do you do you have a way that you tell them? Do you actually tell someone comes in? Like, I have patients that come in, and they’ll say great things about your staff and, whatnot. You know, I thought, well, that’s not captured a lot of times in the surveys that we do, right, with our organizations. But my practice, we’ve been directing them to those websites. I’ve done that too. Have you done that?

Dr. Dheeraj Kamra: I’ve done that too. Yeah.

Dr. Tom Hopkins: Yeah. You know, if you’re really, really happy, please go Yeah. And, you know, put in a review.

Dr. Dheeraj Kamra: Yeah.

Dr. Tom Hopkins: Because I think that’s really important, and, you know, because we have to have a role and a respond we have a role and responsibility, you know, in making sure that that we capture the voice of the patient.

Dr. Dheeraj Kamra: Mhmm.

Dr. Tom Hopkins: But also that we maintain our reputation and then looking at it as an opportunity to improve. You know, I wanted to comment about this. So reputation management, do you how do you tie reputation management into the patient’s perception of the quality of care that they’re getting, the service, access. I mean, what do you do?

Dr. Dheeraj Kamra: That’s the most that’s the meat of the topic here. And I think, you know, nobody teaches this in the medical school.

Dr. Tom Hopkins: Right?

Dr. Dheeraj Kamra: There’s not even a class about reputation management. There’s not even a class about interpersonal skills. We are what we are saying is that, you know, you are a good doctor, but, you know, that skill needs to be out in the public. Right? Nobody’s gonna look at your degree and say, well, he must be a really good doctor.

Dr. Tom Hopkins: Yeah. Do you ever, this came up, and it’s a good question. Do you ever feel that patients can come in with an agenda? Right? They have something they want you to do, whether it’s, hey. I want some opiates, or I want a referral to dermatology. Right? How do you deal with them when it’s maybe something they don’t need. Right? But you fear that somehow they’re gonna go out and Google you, do a review that’s gonna be harmful. How do you deal with that?

Dr. Dheeraj Kamra: Right. That’s a very good question. So I think, you know, that that can happen. Right? The patient coming to you for narcotics or whatever, and that’s not a genuine patient. So particularly when there’s a new patient. It happens particularly with new patients. So old patients you know, Right? And you have a relationship with them, and you know them. So I don’t think that’s more of a problem with these older patients, established patients, but the new patients who are just coming with an agenda that can really happen. So for that case, I always specify clearly. You know, these are the rules. We have to go by the law. We cannot just prescribe you narcotics without, you know, if that’s the agenda, without checking your urine toxicology screen. I need to look at your old, you know, doctor’s notes and old, you know, hospital records and stuff. And, you know, if somebody is, if I find that, you know, and, you know, I’ll be happy to give you your medication, but let me do my homework first.

Dr. Tom Hopkins: Right?

Dr. Dheeraj Kamra: So I would have you establish another appointment, and I’d be happy to see you in a week even or even earlier. But let me do my homework first, and I’ll take care of that. So I don’t just dismiss there. You know? It could be genuine.

Dr. Tom Hopkins: Right.

Dr. Dheeraj Kamra: It could be genuine. So I don’t wanna dismiss it right away. I wanna take my time, look at it carefully, and then make a decision.

Dr. Tom Hopkins: You know, it seems to me that it boils down to, and I get your opinion about this, of really, you know, listening to the patient and understanding where they’re coming from and of all those things we’ve been, you know, they don’t teach us in medical school or whatever, but having empathy and listening to them. What are your thoughts about, if you would say that, qualities that the docs can do? What can you and I do as tools that help us? Reputation management, you know, dealing with a difficult patient. What are some of the things that you do that help you safeguard that?

Dr. Dheeraj Kamra: I mean, most of it is listening to the patient. Right? And responding to them appropriately and in a timely manner. So, also the staff, you know, they need ongoing training, and they can be overwhelmed at times. You know? I don’t wanna see I’ve already 15 patients. I don’t wanna see anyone else. You know? So then the appointment gets delayed. So I think ongoing training, making sure that patient staff is empathetic, I think that’s a problem. You know, that’s the process for that.

Dr. Tom Hopkins: Here’s a question I wanna ask you. This is a question that’s off just some that came to mind. Do you think reputation management plays an impact on the success of a practice, their financial success?

Dr. Dheeraj Kamra: The online reputation, that’s your branding. And the more branding established you have, then, you know, the more people come. So I think that’s very important.

Dr. Tom Hopkins: You know, I was just in, Pete’s, and I was ordering my coffee. And I hear these folks talking about the difficulties with their doctor. And it really was you know, I was eavesdropping, of course, with my coffee, but it was an interesting conversation because we were gonna do this podcast, so I thought it was really relevant to a patient story. And, really, there’s a lot they don’t know about what we have to do to deliver the care that they need. What are your thoughts about that as we tie this in and wrap this up in this, reputation management?

Dr. Dheeraj Kamra: Right. I mean, you know so, again, a patient will see whether you are prepared and well prepared in going to see a patient or not.

Dr. Tom Hopkins: Right?

Dr. Dheeraj Kamra: So that’s what we also tell the staff that, you know, make sure that you have seen if the patient is even from a hospital or not, if there’s a new patient, what is their main complaint. So we have them write it on the appointment schedule so that, you know, the staff goes into the patient’s room well prepared. And I don’t just say, oh, so, you know, what can I do for you? No. I say, you know, what brings you here? You know? And what kind of thing, you know, I can do so. You have to be prepared about that. Same thing with the staff. When they’re checking out, I’ve noticed that a lot of patients do not pick up their, say, the lab requisition or the referral requisition. So we have to make sure that, you know, that they do that. Also, I have instituted one more thing. From a patient review, we try to make the patient’s appointments for referrals right there and then in the office. So I have the office call their specialist and see what appointments are available. And I’ve seen that that increases patient satisfaction a lot. So I found that, you know, that really helped our office.

Dr. Tom Hopkins: Wow.

< p>Dr. Dheeraj Kamra: That improved the patient. That decreased the number of phone calls coming to the office because they had their appointment made already while they’re leaving. And I think that one thing that changed that that really helped us.

Dr. Tom Hopkins: Hey. That’s really valuable. I think that’s great. I’m gonna write that down for myself. But let me ask you, do you have to have a specific person that does that?

Dr. Dheeraj Kamra: Yeah.

Dr. Tom Hopkins: So when you check out a patient, you said I’m gonna refer to Derm, you have that person walk that person through the process of getting that derm referral so it’ll be successful.

Dr. Dheeraj Kamra: Right.

Dr. Tom Hopkins: Is that what you do?

Dr. Dheeraj Kamra: Yep. We have Nancy. Nancy does that for us.

Dr. Tom Hopkins: Yeah. Wow. Can I borrow Nancy? Because that’s really good. I think that’s really valuable, big service.

Dr. Dheeraj Kamra: I think probably one of the things I see that I get feedback on is the delays in referrals.

Dr. Tom Hopkins: Oh my god. Yeah. And then I was almost gonna pull my hair out over this because of this. And so I was like, oh, I need to take care of this effectively and definitively.

Dr. Dheeraj Kamra: Well, I’m telling you, if patients know that and they’re doing it, that’s a big bonus for your reputation. So as we kind of wrap up, I was trying to summarize it. I want you to jump in here if I miss any key points about this. So when we’re talking about reputation management, I always think that reputation matters. So your reputation matters, and it’s really tied to, you know, your interactions within the office, sync the internal, but the social media aspect that is important for us to look at comments, respond quickly as I’m hearing you say.

Dr. Tom Hopkins: Right?

Dr. Dheeraj Kamra: Having somebody responsible for doing that, whether it’s the physician doing it, being very helpful. And negative reviews. I actually do a meeting with the staff. I tell them, this is what is going on. You know what? This is what happened. So we wanna make sure that we never do that again. We have to make sure that this thing never happens again.

Dr. Tom Hopkins: Yeah.

Dr. Dheeraj Kamra: So this is important of learning from those negative reviews and where you’re engaging everybody to know what that review is. I think that’s very, very important. And, of course, if you’re tying into, reputation matters because it’s practice management.

Dr. Tom Hopkins: Right?

Dr. Dheeraj Kamra: Reputation matters. It will take years to create a reputation and one day to destroy it.

Dr. Tom Hopkins: That is fantastic. I like that. So anyway, hey. I wanna just thank you as we wrap up here, Dr. Kamra, for the information you shared with us. I think it’s very valuable. I like that just, you know, that dialogue you’ve had. It’s like, what do you really do getting to know you? It’s been really great. And I would just like to thank our people who are viewing us. You know, thanks for participating in prescriptions for your practice. It is definitely number one prescription for the practice. Number one episode. Yeah. And I really wanna thank Hill Physicians for taking this lead. I think, you know, Hill is a great organization, and what we are doing is basically to improve the lives of the people.

Dr. Dheeraj Kamra: Yeah. Yeah.

Dr. Tom Hopkins: So as we wrap up here, I think that really when you look at it, remember I think all of us remember that it’s important in improving our patient care and that practicing better patient management is really kind of the cornerstone of what we do. So it’s very important that we continue to do that. So I just wanna thank you for being here, and thank you everybody for tuning in to our first podcast episode. Thank you very much, and it’s good to see you.

Dr. Dheeraj Kamra: Thank you. I’m Dr. Tom Hopkins.

Dr. Tom Hopkins: Thank you for participating with prescriptions for your practice.

Dr. Dheeraj Kamra: Thank you very much for tuning in with us today.