How to Change Healthgrades Ratings in Five Steps
Your Healthgrades profile shapes whether patients choose your practice, and these five strategies give you the power to improve it starting today.
- Ask patients for reviews using Healthgrades postcards, handwritten notes, or follow-up emails.
- Use regular patient surveys to catch service problems before they become negative reviews.
- Dispute false or suspicious reviews directly with Healthgrades customer service.
- Respond to patient ratings professionally and in general terms to avoid privacy violations.
- Pursue Recognized Doctor status by maintaining board certification and a clean disciplinary record.
Healthgrades is one of the most influential doctor review sites and directly affects which patients choose your practice. Improving your Healthgrades presence involves proactively soliciting reviews, addressing patient concerns before they escalate, and maintaining the credentials required for Recognized Doctor status. Taking a strategic, consistent approach to your Healthgrades profile is a practical step toward stronger online reputation management.
How to Change Healthgrades Ratings in Five Steps
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1
Ask patients for positive reviews
There is no rule against requesting testimonials from your patients. Healthgrades offers feedback postcards with a practice-specific link leading to your feedback portal, which you can hand out after each visit. You can further boost your chances of positive feedback by attaching a handwritten note to the postcard or sending a follow-up reminder email after appointments.
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2
Use internal surveys to identify care weaknesses
Soliciting feedback after every visit helps you catch patient concerns before they turn into negative public reviews. Use your patients' preferred contact method — phone, email, or mail — and consider offering incentives like promotions to encourage responses. Once a year, send a comprehensive survey covering wait times, staff attentiveness, quality of care, and billing to guide real-time improvements.
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3
Dispute false or inaccurate reviews
If you spot a suspicious review dragging down your rating, contact Healthgrades customer service right away. The company has a solid track record of removing false information, though it requires clear evidence of falsification rather than simply a negative tone. Acting quickly gives you the best chance of having fraudulent content removed before it impacts patient decisions.
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4
Respond professionally to patient ratings
Healthgrades allows you to reply to patient reviews, but you must respond in general terms, avoiding any mention of specific cases or patient names. Always be respectful and address the issues raised, since getting into a heated exchange serves no one and puts your reputation at greater risk. Healthgrades actively monitors responses and will remove any that violate patient privacy or contain inappropriate content.
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5
Pursue Recognized Doctor status
Healthgrades grants Recognized Doctor status to professionals who hold an active, good-standing state license, are board-certified in their specialty, and have no license revocations, malpractice claims, or disciplinary citations within the past five years. If you meet all these criteria, contact Healthgrades directly and request inclusion on the Recognized Doctors list for your state. If you do not yet qualify, use these benchmarks as goals to work toward over time.
Healthgrades is something like the Yelp of doctor reviews. It is one of the top 20 sites seen most often in medical practice search results. As such, your practice’s future may depend on your understanding of how Healthgrades.com affects doctors online. A fair, true, reflection of your practice on Healthgrades is essential in today’s wired world.
One of the most popular and trusted doctor rating and review sites, Healthgrades drives patient decision-making, determining who sets foot in your office—and who stays away. Healthgrades is one of the first sites a doctor should pay attention to when working to improve online reputation.
Here are five tips on changing your practice’s Healthgrades ratings for the better.
1. Don’t be shy about asking for a good review
There’s no rule against asking patients for testimonials. Healthgrades actually offers feedback postcards to give your patients after a visit. Each card has a practice-specific link that leads to your Healthgrades feedback portal. While delivering friendly, attentive care and producing favorable outcomes are the most sustainable ways to secure positive feedback, you can boost your chances further by attaching a handwritten note to your postcard or sending out a reminder email after each visit.
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In addition to postcards and in-office testimonial requests, a review management system can help doctors increase positive reviews and dilute any bad ones.
2. Use internal patient surveys to uncover weak spots in care
One of the reasons doctors may receive negative reviews, whether on Healthgrades or some other place, is because patients may feel heard. Many bad reviews are posted in a moment of anger. If you can mitigate a patients concerns before they leave a bad review, you’ve some preventative care on your own online reputation.
Patients want their doctors to be accessible, so keep your door open (at least during office hours). Solicit feedback from patients after every visit or treatment, using their preferred method—phone, email, snail mail card. Provide incentives for returned surveys, such as with giveaways or promotions. Use this information to make agile, real-time adjustments to care delivery, billing, and other key aspects of the patient experience. And once per year, send out a more comprehensive survey to all current patients. Ask about wait times, staff attentiveness, quality of care, outcomes, and anything else worth noting.
3. Dispute negative or falsified reviews
Like many online review sites, Healthgrades has strict quality control and identity verification protocols. But false reviews sometimes slip through the cracks. If you see a suspicious review dragging down your rating, contact Healthgrades customer service right away.
The company is good about responding to complaints and has a solid track record of removing false information. That said, the site won’t remove a negative review simply because it makes you look bad—there needs to be clear evidence of falsification.
4. Respond (appropriately!) to patient ratings
Healthgrades lets you respond to patient ratings. You need to respond in the most general terms, of course, eschewing mention of specific cases and names. Healthgrades strictly monitors these responses and quickly removes any that violate patient privacy or contain inappropriate material. Always follow the golden rule of responding to online reviews: Be respectful of the messengers and address the issues they raise. Getting into a heated back-and-forth serves no one, and you have far more to lose than an anonymous patient.
5. Work toward “Recognized Doctor” status
Healthgrades confers “Recognized Doctor” status on professionals who meet certain criteria:
● Active, good-standing license in the state where you practice
● Board certification in your specialty
● No previous license revocations or restrictions
● No malpractice claims or disciplinary citations within the past five years
If you meet these criteria, contact Healthgrades and ask to be included on the list of Recognized Doctors in your state. If not, well, it’s never too late to begin working toward this goal.
Most tech-savvy medical professionals know how Healthgrades affects doctors online. Fewer know how to change Healthgrades ratings for the better. By following the five steps above and adhering to online reputation management best practices, you can set yourself apart from the increasingly crowded, competitive medical field and focus on taking care of those who matter most—your patients.
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