Online Reputation
Here is where AMA knows nothing again: online reputation. According to this piece:
Former chair of the AMA Young Physicians Section, Ravi D. Goel, M.D. offers four tips for physicians: firstly, physicians should search for themselves. Typing queries such as name or full name and rating, as well as specialty and local areas, will show relevant results. Physicians should ensure the accuracy of information on their practice website, health rating websites, social media accounts, and professional organizational pages. Goel recommends getting a professional headshot, which can be used anywhere that the physician’s name is featured. Finally, he recommends addressing critics in a positive way; negative reviews should not be addressed immediately, but should be responded to later by calling the patient or sending a note of apology and offering to reschedule. The way a physician appears to patients can be controlled by optimizing the first few search engine results.
“I used to never Google myself because I was afraid to see what patients thought about me,” Goel said in an AMA news release. “Then I decided to take charge of my online reputation. I wanted to make sure that no matter how a patient searched for me, they were going to get basic, factual information about me.”
Now the truth. You cannot control or change what has been put on these ratings sites (ex RateMDs). I had a bad comment written about me from almost 5 years ago and I never even saw the patient. I cannot remove it. I asked the site to take it down and they refuse. On the flip side, I emailed patients to put a nice comment about me if they could. They did. Fourteen, in fact. RateMDs took them all down because they came in a few day span. First, they lied and said it was all from the same IP address. Then they just stopped responding to my queries. I guess they down want docs asking for reviews but why not? It’s a game and these sites are run by lowlifes. The problem is that your reputation is important. All you can do is be a good doc and then ask patients to sporadically give you a good rating in order to drown out the bad ones. And that is what the AMA won’t tell you.
