As marketing leaders at Salt Lake City-based Intermountain Health know well, Google ratings are the "front door" for consumers in many industries — healthcare included.
So how can a health system like Intermountain boost those ratings, and in turn the search visibility, of its many healthcare providers?
In 2023, Intermountain started texting patients after appointments with links to leave reviews on Google. This has helped the 34-hospital system improve its Google star rating from 3.7 to 4.5 and bring in an average of 4,500 ratings a month, a ninefold increase.
"Google ratings are the digital front door, and the digital front door has become the front door to healthcare, as it has in most other industries," Megan Mahncke, chief marketing and communications officer of Intermountain Health, told Becker's. "Just like you do when you're going to dinner tonight or you're going to purchase something, you're looking at those ratings."
Intermountain partnered with customer experience company Reputation on the platform. The health system has alerts set up so it can view reviews as they're posted, and works with Reputation on review reply templates and escalation of reviews if they require additional response.
In the past, when patients left reviews they tended to be on one end of the two extremes — amazing or horrible. "Usually the story is somewhere in the middle," Ms. Mahncke said. Now that Intermountain gets more reviews, the ratings are more balanced and representative of the actual patient experience. In the process, Intermountain improved its share of positive reviews, from 78% to 88%, with more than 10,000 five-star ratings.
The platform has also given Intermountain providers real-time insights and feedback from patients they wouldn't have had otherwise. It has allowed them to quickly address issues patients were having, which include things that happen outside of the office, like how easy it is to get there.
As in digital as a whole, healthcare has lagged behind other sectors in having robust online ratings and reviews. This is an industry that still sends surveys by mail. In turn, healthcare, which is so reliant on data, has suffered from a dearth of real-time consumer experience insights.
"If you get feedback that is months later, you can't do the immediate follow-up or course correction," she said. "And if you just take it full circle, that's what consumers expect and have in every other facet of their life. And we are really now catching up in healthcare."
Once patients locate a provider on Google, they also want an easy-to-use website with online appointment scheduling, all part of the optimal digital experience in healthcare nowadays.
"Consumers, I don't think they break it up as a digital experience," Ms. Mahncke noted. "Did I find what I needed? Could I get what I wanted in my schedule and my time? It's upon us as health systems to make that happen as easily as possible. So are your locations accurate? Can I search for them, no matter where I am? Can I find a clinic and, once I do, find that provider?"
Initially, there was some "healthy skepticism" among Intermountain providers, who didn't want to be rated like a "pair of shoes on Amazon," Ms. Mahncke noted. "Once we piloted this and they saw the engagement, once we were being responsive to their patients, once their work when they're providing good experiences was creating greater accessibility, they were all bought in," she said.
A lot of big health systems are exploring similar platforms, Ms. Mahncke said. She recently attended an industry meeting, where about half of her peer institutions had already adopted a program like this.
Her advice to other chief marketing officers aiming to boost their online ratings?
"There will be skepticism, so start small," she said. "And you've really got to manage it. These tools and platforms are only as effective as what's on the back side. So if you're going to ask for the opinion and the experience, you have to manage those expectations. Whether it was 'you guys did amazing' — and those happen more naturally — or you didn't, it's the service recovery. You really have to make sure you're prepared to handle those."
But Ms. Mahncke would definitely recommend that other health system marketing leaders take a closer look at their online review strategy.
"It's been really cool for us," she said. "In healthcare, as we do more and more of this, this is going to be important, because this is what consumers are expecting. We've got to meet them where they are."