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Hi, everybody. This is Dr. Perry with a fearless chiropractor. Welcome to a webinar on Google reviews, how to respond to Google reviews and how to do it correctly so that you save your bottoms. In the process, go to slides again. My name is Dr. Perry Barnhill. I’m a chiropractor just like you all as chiropractors.
I understand what it’s like to be in office. I understand what it’s like to have compliance at the top of our minds many times and not knowing how to do things. So let’s do this. We’re going to go through these reviews. We’re going to talk about how you should respond to the reviews. And again, like I said, Responding to Google Reviews, HIPAA compliance guide for you as chiropractors and how to do it the right way, protecting patient privacy while you engage online.
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Alrighty, so why do Google Reviews matter? We know they matter because they impact your online reputation. They build positive engagement that builds trust. with potential patients and patients that we already have because we know our patients read these reviews. Engagement builds SEO. Compliance with HIPAA is crucial in all patient communications, understanding HIPAA in online interactions.
All right, so let’s do this. Let’s go through a HIPAA overview. I know you all love HIPAA, but let’s just talk about this and lay the foundation. HIPAA protects patient private information, right? We call it PHI or protected health information. And PHI includes almost Anything that’s unique about the patient.
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It literally could be their IP address. Obviously, we all know as chiropractors, it’s their name, but it includes almost anything where you can identify a particular patient in your office. That’s PHI, and those are the things we have to by law protect. And as you all heard, Violations can result in big fines and no doubt damage our reputation.
So we want to be careful, but there’s a way to do it that we can respond and do it very compliantly. And it’s not that complicated. Okay, so here we go. Do’s and don’ts. Responding to the reviews. Let’s start with the do’s do keep responses generic and professional focus on their service, the customer service, not their care, their medical care, their chiropractic care, whatever we want to call it.
Now, here’s some of the don’ts. We never want to confirm or imply that the reviewer is a patient or even a patient that’s related. No way. Know how do not even comply in or in confirm whatsoever. We don’t want to mention Any details about their care, including their family members or anything, and I’ll give you some examples here.
So let’s do this. Creating a safe response to positive reviews. Here’s an example review that we get often, right? Dr. Steve and his team are fantastic. They always make me feel comfortable. And here’s an example response. Thank you so much for your kind words. We strive to provide a comfortable And welcome and experience for everyone who visits our office and you’re going to notice some things that I’m going to say that we didn’t specifically say they didn’t say, Hey, we love having you as patients.
So if we said that, that’s an implication or essentially a confirmation that their patients in our office, we can’t say things like that. That’s why we keep these responses very generic. Now, what about some negative reviews? Here’s an example. I had a disappointing experience with Dr. Steve’s office because of the wait time.
Here’s an example and how to respond. We always appreciate any feedback. We take concerns like this seriously and would like to learn more. Please contact our office directly so we can address this issue. Notice again, here’s what I didn’t say. Hey, sorry. You had a negative response in our office because that would be an implication, basically a confirmation that they were in fact there.
And this is what we can’t do. No implications, no confirmations, nothing that implies they were in our office because that could be a violation of HIPAA, believe it or not. So navigating complex reviews. Example review. The whole family loves seeing Dr. Steve. We love taking care of families. That’d be a great way to respond.
And again, the key point here is the respond is safe because it doesn’t reveal that the patient or their family members are patients of ours. Here’s some mistakes to avoid. And I know I’m reiterating I’m, I sound like a broken record, but please acknowledging that the patient or their family members in any way confirms their status, that they’re actually patients in our office.
We don’t want to do providing any additional information about their care. Even if they mention it first and one of the biggest things I want to emphasize here because I see this all the time Engaging in back and forth discussions that might inadvertently disclose more details So if and a lot of times this comes from negative reviews if you ever get a negative review I’ll sometimes see docs get in there and almost start an argument with that particular patient one If you do that, you’ve obviously acknowledged or confirmed that they’re in your office.
So just don’t do it. It never ever goes anywhere So what’s the best way? In regards to HIPAA best practices here. We always want to thank the reviewer without confirming any details. Like I said, in the examples there, we want to keep this responses focused on just general customer service, encourage offline communications for specific concerns.
And train your team how to handle these reviews in a compliant manner. This is very important and as a matter of fact, part of your HIPAA training should be training your team and how to handle reviews in a compliant manner so that they don’t make the mistakes and confirm, acknowledge, or actually imply that these patients are, patients in our offices.
So what happens? Handling potential HIPAA violations if you accidentally disclose PHI. Remember PHI is protected health information, which I was saying earlier, could almost be anything regarding that particular patient. Take that review offline right away. Get rid of it. Get rid of the evidence. Just get rid of it.
Consult with your compliance officer for guidance. I know you all know you’re supposed to have appointed compliance officer. So speak with him, speak with her. If the doctor is the actual appointed compliance officer, decide what you need to do next because sometimes we may need to report it to necessary authorities.
Hopefully we never have to do that, but sometimes it is necessary. So make sure you find out if you should or if you shouldn’t report final tips for success. Respond promptly. but thoughtfully. Regularly review your HIPAA policies related to online interactions, like we’re talking about. Encourage satisfied patients to leave positive reviews.
Sometimes it’s hard to avoid a negative review. You can’t please everybody. Encourage patients to really, to, respond with positive reviews so that, such that we can bury The bad reviews with good ones. Remember protecting patient privacy. It’s not just a legal requirement. It’s commitment to the trust that your patients place in you.
So be very careful with these things. Here’s some next steps. Download your HIPAA checklist. If you’re not sure if you’re compliant with HIPAA in regards to even other things outside of Google Reviews, download this checklist. You can go to the QR code, check it out, go through, answer these questions.
If you’re not following these things, then you probably should get something going such that you do because the consequences we don’t even want to talk about. And you know what? Here’s the thing. It doesn’t have to be complicated. If you understand what it is you need, it becomes so much less complicated.
If you understand the language, then it’s a lot easier to learn and communicate. So I don’t want you to be afraid. You can schedule a demo or get started. One, if you want to schedule a demo, click the QR code. You can go to this website here. If you just want to get started, you can rock and roll, get started at thebetterhipablueprint.
com or I am more than happy to help any of you. With this stuff. Remember, I’m a chiropractor just like you. I don’t want you to get in trouble. I don’t want you to have massive stresses about these things. So it’s such that you can focus on your patients. Those are the things that we love to do. Again, I want to give a big thanks for allowing us this opportunity to speak about Google reviews and how to respond to them and how to respond to them in a way such that we do not get ourselves in trouble in the meantime.
Dr. Perry here. Have an awesome day.
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