DoctorU Special Report - How-to respond guide on the Doctor-Patient Reviews Dichotomy & HIPAA Patient Privacy Laws - Problems & Solutions! – By
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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 HIPAA 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 & HIPAA Patient Privacy laws:
Because of the inherent dichotomy in the Terms and Conditions of most websites and the HIPAA "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.
"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.
https://virtualu.net/2019/09/13/how-to-respond-guide-on-the-doctor-patient-reviews-dichotomy-hipaa-patient-privacy-laws/
