In this Telehealth Feature Series, we’re going to cover the long list of potential telehealth features available today. As you’re considering your own approach to telehealth, we will provide you a look at all the possible features telehealth companies are offering on the market. Plus, we’ll offer our insight into the nuances of each feature so you can select the right telehealth company or companies you use. Not all telehealth is created equal, so taking the time to understand all the possible features and options is worth the effort.
The next feature we’re going to cover is Post-Visit Patient Rating, Reviews, and Surveys.
We’ll break this feature into two parts. The first is internal requests for ratings, reviews, and patient surveys. The second is encouraging patients to rate and review you on external doctor ratings websites.
Internal Reviews and Surveys
There’s obviously a lot of power when it comes to requesting feedback from patients after a visit with one of your clinicians. This is true if it’s a telehealth or in-person visit. That means that most healthcare organizations already have some sort of ability to request patient feedback after the appointment. At least those that want this already have this feature. Those that don’t want the feedback won’t care if your telehealth platform has this feature or not.
The reality is that we’ve seen a few telehealth companies that ask patients for feedback after a telehealth visit, but most of them aren’t building this as a major feature of their telehealth platform. Some of them have a really basic rating or feedback option, but that’s it.
External Doctor Ratings and Reviews
Turns out, the same is largely true for getting patients to submit a doctor rating or review on one of the external doctor ratings websites like ZocDoc, CareDash, Angie’s List, or HealthGrades just to name a few. Most telehealth platforms seem to assume that a doctor’s office already has the ability to solicit these types of ratings and reviews from their patient. Little do they know that many practices were handing a little business card to patients asking them to review their visit.
While most have not capitalized on this, I think that telehealth companies should take advantage of this opportunity. Unlike the in-person visit where you have to convince the patient to hop on their device and go and rate the doctor, after a video visit, the telehealth platform could just redirect the patient right to the ratings website of their choice to leave a physician rating and review. That’s a huge opportunity for doctors to drive ratings on these website which can really influence how many patients get referred from these websites to your practice. Plus, having telehealth reviews would add to your credibility as a telehealth clinician.
The advanced feature a telehealth company could build would be the option for the doctor to be able to choose if the patient is asked to rate the visit on one of these review websites. I think most would leave this on by default, but if the visit didn’t go quite as good as it could have gone, the doctor could check a box which would then not invite the patient to review the visit.
It’s amazing the power of more ratings and reviews when it comes to driving new patients to a healthcare organization. So, it’s a bit surprising that most telehealth companies haven’t spent time on these types of features. Granted, there are a lot of companies out there that are focused completely on ratings and reviews, so the better path might be to partner with one of these companies so that the telehealth company doesn’t have to keep up with the latest idiosyncracies of each physician ratings and review website.
Be sure to check out our full list of telehealth features, our deep dive into each telehealth feature, and our list of telehealth companies.
