September
13th 2019 Press Release - How-to respond guide on the Doctor Patient Reviews Dichotomy & HIPPA Patient Privacy Laws - Problems &
Solutions! – By https://VirtualU.net/about-us/
Do-Not
Respond to Patient Reviews Online:
How
should Physicians respond to online patient reviews or comments? The
only right answer: "You
don't!"--
If you do, you can quickly, easily and inadvertently reveal patient
information when responding online without first consulting HIPPA
patient privacy guidelines, your lawyer and your reputation
management company. In most cases, your response cannot be removed
once posted. This professional advice from VirtualU comes from the
inventor of reputation management and 30 years experience handling
1000's of successful online reputation actions. If you consider
leaving a properly compliant response on the Internet, please contact
us first.
What
would be the purpose of your response? How would you know the
response of the reviewer, Yelp or a Judge? This would be similar to
showing a customer around your office and the customer wanting to or
being forced to see your dirty laundry. In the search results, the
negatives would be above the fold, and visible in Google without even
clicking on anything. A hundred percent of online customers would see
the dirty laundry; unless they are blind. Nothing looks worse than a
doctor arguing with a patient online. Furthermore, as soon as you
respond to a comment, the website will likely consider the customer
review valid; just because you replied to it. And, limit your options
of the review to be taken down later.
The
Dichotomy of Doctor Reviews Sites & HIPPA Patient Privacy laws:
Because
of the inherent dichotomy in the Terms and Conditions of most
websites and the HIPPA "guidelines". Most reviews sites
require a reviewer to be an existing customer; yet the Doctor is not
allowed to confirm that it's a real customer. 84% of consumers turn
to review sites to find a doctor. Fewer than one in five have a
process for dealing with bad reviews, even though more than 80% of
providers are concerned about the damage reviews can cause. Dr. Jay
Calvert, the President of the Rhinoplasty Society has a blog on the
issue pointing out "there is over 30 doctor reviews sites and
none verify the reviewers by any certainty".
Patient
data includes anything that someone can use to identify a patient,
including the individual’s bio-metrics: Name, Email address, Phone
number, Birthday, Appointment dates/times, Test results, Diagnoses,
Don’t acknowledge whether the reviewer has ever been a patient.
Focus on general office policies. Use generic language whenever
possible.
Get
VirtualU's 3rd
Party Solutions & Advice
Doctors
need to be very cautious if they plan to respond to patients’
online reviews. The simple act of admitting that Ms. Jones is your
patient publicly violates the HIPAA Privacy rule, and some physicians
have been penalized, terminated or a lawsuit may result. VirtualU has
the proven case study solutions for removing inappropriate reviews,
properly responding to reviews and use of comment boxes, 3rd
party verification of reviewers, 3rd
party checking for legality and privacy policy of each site and 3rd
party take down requests. Our new DoctorU Reputation Computer also
comes pre-installed with a reviews management application so that
customers can leave reviews for you, on the sites you want them to,
right from your office.
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| DoctorU Practice-Shield Computer |
"You
own Your Data", and Your Reputation:
Question:
“Who owns Your Data?”, your “Virtual You”? Answer: “You
Do!” - Mark Zuckerberg at the Facebook Congressional Hearings.
That's the purpose of our VirtualU Privacy-Shield Monitoring &
Data Removals Service is to secure your data with the standpoint of
the EU's “right to be forgotten” laws; and civil and legal laws.
At the beginning, “Your Reputation is Everything” was the
tag-line for Reputation Saviors. Now, to permanently secure your
past, current and future reputation and success, we have invented our
own DoctorU Reputation Computer we customize and send to each
customer to use at their office and a yearly DoctorU Reputation
Protection Plan to have a VirtualU Guru manage your reputation
management, social media accounts, news distribution, search engine
optimization; and support on retainer, all year. Many of our
customers in our case studies have had just one negative review on
Yelp and it was ruining their business into bankruptcy. One improper
comment could cost you your practice. Improper responses could cost
you large fines or your license. No negative or positive review is
worth the chance of hurting the long term success of your business,
your reputation and your data.
How
to avoid a Lawsuit and reduce your Insurance Rates:
That's
the hundred percent sure way to avoid a lawsuit. Every story on how a
doctor should respond to online reviews contains bad advice from
industry professionals and reputation specialists and even Yelp and
Google. The first thing you do, is the new review would have been
picked up by our VirutalU reputation monitoring software. Then, after
we research the source of the reviewer, and review the terms and
conditions of each site, all we have on file, then, and only then,
would you even consider directly responding to a reviewer with a
reply comment. The general rule in reputation management is to leave
the negative posts alone, don't create unusual activity to that
profile, and don't exacerbate the situation unless you've considered
the options; our "20 Ways to Remove a Yelp" and the various
options you have to combat each individual situation. In a recent
statistical study there is a high correlation of higher insurance
rates for doctors with poor reviews on the Internet.
VirtualU's
"20 Ways to Remove a Yelp" or remove data from any Website:
Also,
reported by two online sources incorrectly to “Self assess your
Reputation"! Do-not try to self assess your reputation any more
than a patient should self assess their cancer therapy; or try to
read the minds of your reviewers, Yelp, a Lawyer nor a Judge. We do
have customers that have claimed they can even read the minds of
other species. Don't take their advice, but have fun with it. "Have
you Googled yourself lately? If you don’t know what’s being said
about you or your practice online, you need to self-assess your
current reputation." - Online Source. You are best to have
gotten a free deep web analysis or have spoken to our VirtualU
Guru's, read our reputation management E-book, used our services or
have completed reading this report.
Do
Not Self-Assess Your Reputation – Get a Free VirtualU Analysis:
Why
are all websites online when searching for "how should a doctor
respond to reviews" are giving you inherently wrong and
inherently negative leading advice on "how" to respond to a
patient review; and not considering the dozens of other options you
have beforehand?? The news reports from major media outlets, the
doctor reputation management companies, and industry analysts are
giving you the wrong and bad advice that could immediately turn into
a lawsuit. Then, between the lawsuit appearing in Google and the 1
star Yelp, you eventually lose all your customers. VirtualU does have
solutions to get you out of this online situation and get you back in
business, but lets just say you may have to move to another state to
start a new business. Have an experienced VirtualU guru perform a
free deep web search, reputation analysis of your name or company and
provide you a solution to proper reputation protection, removal
options, reviews management and search engine optimization. Better
yet, call another reputation management company for their advice, and
then call us.
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| DoctorU Reputation Protection Plan |
Examples
of Bad Advice by Industry Observers & Reputation Companies:
Another
report suggested how to respond to both positive and negative
reviews. Both, are bad advice. Responding at all makes that doctor
reviews site profile link more popular in the eyes of the website
itself and will appear more and more popular to Google. Until... all
the negative reviews sites appear directly under your website in
Google, forever! From a Reputation Management prospective, Those
reviews sites are generally the one's you want to diminish; or foster
the placement of reviews on select sites. More of which one's you
could flag or control by the T&C of the website.
Another
blog gave wrong advice "Don’t ask the patient to take their
review down. Whether you ask politely, or threaten the reviewer with
a $500 fine, it’s bad practice to ask the reviewer to take their
comments down. Instead, focus on addressing their complaint and
resolving any problems. If you’re lucky, the patient will
appreciate your effort and consider changing or updating their review
on their own.". There are several proper case study methods to
find who the reviewer actually is, and then ask a customer to take
down a review, or any other particular information. In other cases,
the customer review could be incorrectly, improperly written or that
the customer revealed personal information; so as to get the website
to make corrections or whereas the customer may not be able to change
or correct the review; and you or the customer asks the website to
take it down. These legal and case study options are part of our "20
Ways to Remove a Yelp" document and tutorial.
Dealing
with Reviews Websites with a Reputation Management Perspective:
When
researching a company, product or a person, 90% first look you up on
Google and 75% of respondents said they would not do business with
someone who had negative information showing up in the search
engines. From a reputation management perspective, it's our job to
control the search engines and the message. From VirtualU "Online
reputation management is correctly defined as the process of taking
the correct and legal steps for taking full control of the search
results related to you our your company. It is accomplished by
removing, replacing or diminishing unwanted information found on the
internet with hundreds to thousands of new websites, new listings and
positive press.” This has the effect of directing people directly
to your website, your social media and to your message, instead of
having Google and Healthgrades deciding about your reputation.
Reviews
Management of Reviews Sites & Directories:
As
a guideline, you want to control which reviews sites appear in Google
and which sites you should foster reviews from your customers. We
have various case studies and proven methods and software installed
on the DoctorU Computer for your office. This can be setup properly
for you with the idea of reputation protection, the first time,
depending on your situation and manage the online reviews. We have
current customers and current case studies where we control what
links appear in the search results and we control which sites
customers leave reviews on.
https://virtualu.net/product/doctoru-reputation-management-computer/
DoctorU
will help you get more Reviews and more Referrals:
According
to a 2016 survey, 70% of consumers said they’ll leave a review for
a business if they’re asked to. We'll help you find the methods to
generate customer reviews that are best for you. Some other offline
methods are the Yelp restaurant secret shoppers method, Comment
cards, 3rd party questionnaires. It is important to note that most
comment boards are not highly monitored. It is appropriate in some
cases, to respond to comments with text written that is purely
promotional. The best method, in our opinion, is to use the comment
sections of all websites to your advantage, while also abiding by the
websites terms and conditions. The comments could include information
about your new coupon, text and links to your newest press release,
or even links back to your social media and video's for people to
watch.
From
the Terms and Conditions Perspective:
-
Facebook Hearings on “your data”
-
Recent changes in Laws “right to be forgotten”
-
Copies of each websites T&C & privacy policy
-
How to use the T&C's to your advantage
From
the Legal Perspective:
-
How to sue to reveal reviewer
-
How and when to sue Yelp
-
Legal Reasons to remove data
-
Legal Requests to remove data
-
Google Legal & Take-down requests
Bonus
Trade-Secret Report:
“20
Ways to Remove a Yelp or from any Website”
- Subscribe
to get the 2 Full Reports
About
VirtualU:
424-249-0271
VirtualU’s
founders invented reputation management in 1996 at Art Data
Interactive; comparison shopping and reviews management at Shop.com
in 2001, reputation management at Reputation Saviors in 2010 and on
May 1st, 2018 after the Facebook congressional hearings on your
private data, your “VirtualU” Privacy-Shield! VirtualU has served
football players, baseball, hockey, cheerleaders, beauty contestants,
entertainers in music, books, movies, professionals in the stock
market, banks, doctors, dentists, attorneys, those in public office
like school teachers, police officers, military, individuals, parents
of children, privacy experts and media providers.
https://virtualu.net/2019/09/13/how-to-respond-guide-on-the-doctor-patient-reviews-dichotomy-hippa-patient-privacy-laws/
