How Ardent Health Services Drives Patient Acquisition Using ReviewTrackers

Building a Patient-Centric Acquisition Strategy

There is a vital shift occurring in healthcare marketing and patient acquisition. Providers must not only navigate a number of channels that are quickly shifting towards digital; they must also cater to consumers whose healthcare decisions are influenced heavily by social proof, online word of mouth, and peer-generated feedback. 

According to research:

• Healthcare brands that maintain an overall rating of 4 to 4.5 stars earn 28% more revenue annually than lower-rated brands. 
• 72% of consumers use online reviews as the first step to finding a new doctor.
• 20% of search rankings are determined by reviews.

Ardent Health Services — a premier provider of healthcare services headquartered in Nashville, TN, with a network of acute care hospitals, rehabilitation sites, multi-specialty physician groups, ambulatory surgery centers and urgent care centers — understands that adopting a customer-centric approach can drive patient acquisition and bottom-line impact.

Since partnering with ReviewTrackers in 2018, the company has leveraged the software solution to boost its patient acquisition strategy: 

• Improving local SEO performance to drive more conversions;
• Amplifying reviews and feedback to build brand credibility; and
• Managing local listings to gain control of the patient journey. 

Robust Review Growth Attracts and Acquires Patients

Ardent Health Services uses ReviewTrackers to request feedback from patients and generate new online reviews on sites like Google, Healthgrades, Vitals, and Facebook.

The software platform’s Ask Tool allows the company to create and customize close to 40 review request email campaigns, which contain links to specific websites where providers can benefit from getting more reviews. 

To take the manual legwork out of following up on these review requests, Ardent Health takes advantage of the Ask Tool’s Drip Campaigns, a feature that sends a “reminder” email to patients who previously received a request but hadn’t yet shared their feedback or review.

Using these tools, Ardent Health has sent over 129,500 review requests, recording high-performance open and clickthrough rates. Compared to the prior six months, the company generated more than 4,200 new reviews, a 76% increase.

Along with the rapid increase in the number of reviews, the company has improved its overall rating to 4.22 stars out of 5 across all major business review sites over the last 12 months: a 16% jump from the prior year.

Effective Listings Management Boosts Search Performance and Acquisition

A brand with accurate and consistent online information — such as name, address, phone number, category, and operating hours — is well-positioned to have its listings rank higher in search engine results. 

• Local listings and citations are one of the top 5 signals that factor into organic and local search rankings as well as the Google Maps Pack.
• Name, address, and phone number consistency accounts for 10% of what Google takes into consideration when ranking businesses in local search. 

Recognizing the importance of its core web properties, Ardent Health Services utilizes ReviewTrackers’ Local Listing Management service to achieve greater brand visibility in search. 

So far, the company has onboarded 100% of its locations and physician profiles across 63% of the top directories. For Ardent Health, Local Listings serves as a unified listings management solution to:

• Update business or physician name, address, and phone number across all major and healthcare-specific online review sites, directories, and local listings
• Specify the business category, website address, and Google listing ID of each listing
• Update the operating hours of individual offices and providers
• Add new locations or physician profiles, or import the information directly from Google

While consistency is key, reputation can sway healthcare decisions. Apart from ensuring the consistency of its listings and profiles, ReviewTrackers also empowers Ardent Health Services to monitor reputational data — individually or at scale — through Location Scores, a proprietary formula that factors in average rating, number of reviews, and review response rates. 

This valuable source of information helps larger organizations resolve crises and complaints, improve the patient experience, and foster the type of consumer trust essential to acquiring more patients. 

Amplifying Reviews Builds Brand Credibility

Research shows that testimonials can increase conversions on sales pages by 34%. In today’s social media age, online reviews have emerged as one of the most potent forms of testimonials — providing the type of social proof essential to building brand credibility and consumer trust.

• According to the Online Reviews Survey, 94% of consumers say an online review has convinced them to avoid a business.
• 92.4% of consumers use online reviews to guide most of their ordinary purchasing decisions (NRC Health).
• 62% of consumers age 18 to 34 trust a brand because of good reviews and ratings. (Marketing Charts)

It makes sense that, even amidst the current health crisis and reduced spending on traditional advertising initiatives, Ardent Health Services is utilizing reviews as marketing assets that complement the company’s patient acquisition efforts.

Here’s an example of a dynamic review widget displayed on one of the brand’s location pages:

The widget was created using ReviewTrackers Amplify, a review widget suite that dynamically displays all or a curated set of patient reviews on a brand website as well as on location and physician pages.

To respond to evolving demands and drive patient acquisition, providers must adopt a customer-centric approach aimed at expanding the ways in which they engage with healthcare consumers.

ReviewTrackers is Ardent Health Services’ patient acquisition solution of choice. By adopting technology that streamlines the review request process, provides full control of local listing management efforts, and leverages patient reviews as testimonials, the company is supercharging its online brand presence to attract new patients and retain existing ones.