Hospice and home-based care providers cannot put online reputation management on the back burner.

That’s a key takeaway from a recent report from Transcend Strategy Group. While all businesses should be concerned about maintaining a good online reputation, this is especially important for home-based hospice care providers due to their unique care delivery setting, according to Tony Kudner, chief strategy officer at Transcend.

A hospice provider’s digital presence can give patients and their families greater insight when it comes to the quality and depth of their services, Kudner said.

“When you are dealing with the intimacy of someone coming into your home, the personalization and how you feel about the agency that you open the door for matters more,” Kudner told Hospice News.

Online reputation can play an important role in a family’s decision-making processes when it comes to choosing a hospice provider and can be a driver of its patient census volumes, Kudner indicated.

Curtice, Ohio-based Transcend provides data-driven insights to help home-based care companies make better business decisions. The consulting firm’s recent report found that 65% of adults use online research to learn more about medical conditions. This means that sometimes individuals see online reviews instead of a hospice organization’s website.  

Most hospice providers aim to establish a strong online reputation management system, but figuring out the best way to accomplish this can be tricky, said Jordan Dockery, manager of digital strategy and client services at Transcend.

“Having to manage reputation online can quickly become really overwhelming, especially if you’re taking in reviews and comments on social media platforms on multiple pages,” Dockery told Hospice News. “What’s the appropriate tone, what’s the appropriate language to use, can cause a bit of a hurdle for organizations.”

Over the years, individuals receiving care services and health care employees have increasingly turned to social media and online review sites to express when they’re unhappy with an organization, as well as share positive recommendations.

The Transcend report found that 15% of consumers use social media when seeking out information about an illness and treatment options.

“You can read people’s reviews in real-time and form opinions about the care that you might receive at an organization before you even pick up a phone and make a call, before you even go to the website,” Dockery said. “There’s a bunch of information available online already about an organization that they might not have control over. You can’t necessarily control what review someone is leaving on your page.”

Nevertheless, providers can control how they respond to these online comments. This can mean responding to a positive review expressing gratitude. It can also involve responding to a negative review in a way that addresses the reviewers concerns with empathy and compassion, and offers a chance to follow up further. 

However, hospice providers should not completely ignore online comments, according to Dockery.

“When you are ignoring your online reviews, or you’re ignoring comments on social media, you’re putting out that you are not a responsive organization,” Dockery said. “You want to stay committed to being responsive to those individuals. Feedback is really important, and can identify areas where you might need to look at your care processes.”

Overall, hospices should implement an internal system to manage their online reputation, Dockery stated. This can look like assigning a communications or marketing leader who stays on top of online reviews and managing the company’s social media profiles and digital presence. 

This also includes tapping a clinical or operations leader who can address care-related concerns, and a human resource professional who can respond to employee critics. 

Hospices should also identify the corners of the internet where the company is receiving the most feedback, Dockery indicated. Plus, providers should have a playbook that outlines how to respond.

“You don’t want to have that panic of, ‘Oh my gosh, we just got this review, I have no idea what to do,’” Dockery said. “You want to have a calm response that you can already rely on from a playbook. You want to have that internal infrastructure already built to go, I know I need to direct it to this team member, this person can weigh in on before we respond. Having a playbook to address both good and the bad is going to make life significantly easier.”