How Nicklaus Children’s Hospital Improves Service and Responds to Patient Reviews

Nicklaus Children’s Hospital is one of the leading pediatric hospitals in the nation. It’s part of Miami Children’s Health System, the area’s only healthcare system fully dedicated to pediatric care. The health system’s mission is to inspire hope and lifelong health by providing the best care to children.

The team at Nicklaus Children’s Hospital is dedicated to monitoring the reviews and reputation of their physicians, while also ensuring that physicians and staff at outpatient and care centers are meeting the needs of children and their families.

According to Nicklaus Children’s Hospital’s marketing coordinator, Saran Zamora, and web marketing manager, Robert Prieto, company stakeholders wanted a better method for capturing patient feedback, particularly those posted on web review sites. It was also taking too many hours for the marketing team to manually collect online reviews posted by patients.

How do you use ReviewTrackers?

Robert: We use ReviewTrackers to monitor our medical services. It’s for monitoring locations and the reputation of our physicians that are members of the medical staff — primarily those physicians who are employed by the Pediatric Specialists of America, the hospital’s physician group.

Have you noticed any changes since using ReviewTrackers?

Robert: Our overall rating has improved.

Saran: The fact that we now easily respond to reviews is a big change. And now with Review Trackers, I have the ease of responding in a timely manner. For the community at large, the fact that we are engaging with the patient and responding to their needs/comments, I believe, says something about our commitment.

While we offer the online reviewer an opportunity to contact our Patient & Guest Relations team to resolve issues or discuss concerns, we have not seen people calling.  I question if, moving forward, we just might see this trend change as people see that we are actively listening and engaged.

How do insights from social media compare to reviews?

Robert: The purpose of social media is really to be contextual — for monitoring the mention of our brand. It allows us to see how our brand is being used and in what context.

With ReviewTrackers, we can get granular insights and a snapshot of what the overall sentiment is for all of our reviews. So we get an overall star rating for a particular medical group or a particular doctor. It allows us to aggregate the actual star rating of reviews.

So the other social media tools are more for only managing reputation?

Robert: It is more specifically for how we are mentioned. In what way are we mentioned in this particular public post on all these social channels? We would receive these reports on a daily basis, and we have the ability of monitoring using a real-time dashboard. We literally could open it up, for example, and see what is being said about our brand in real-time. And we also use it for competitive insights, to see how much share employees have in social media.

How do you use the reports provided by ReviewTrackers?

Saran: The reports are sent to service line administrators and directors at our different outpatient centers.

The leadership teams are able to gain insight into the customer experience. For example, the outpatient leadership teams are provided a monthly report that incorporates all the reviews that pertain to their corresponding center(s) and they can ask questions such as, “Where are gaps in services,” and “Where can we enhance or expand our services?” “What is it that the community is saying about the services we are delivering and how we deliver services.”

It’s important to know if someone is having difficulty scheduling an appointment or resolving a billing inquiry. ReviewTrackers helps us maintain awareness of these types of comments that we might not otherwise capture. It helps us achieve our goal.

Do you respond to reviews?

Saran: Yes, we are especially vigilant of reviews that provide insight to a customer service gap. We offer these reviewers an opportunity to contact our Patient & Guest Relations Department to discuss the experience or address the issue.  Now, we are discussing how we might respond or acknowledge positive comments and compliments to further our engagement with online reviewers.

Why is it important to monitor both the Hospital Consumer Assessment of Healthcare Providers and Systems (HCAHPS) survey and online reviews?

Robert: HCAHPS is very valuable to us because we know it is from a patient. ReviewTrackers is a complementary piece, an additional piece that allows us to really engage the sentiment and the perception of a particular group of physicians or a particular physician, or a location.  

What are the legal issues you deal with when it comes to reviews?

Robert: Patient privacy is a priority for us and there are patient confidentiality laws that we must adhere to. We format our responses to encourage the reviewer to engage with us privately, in order to resolve the manner off-line and confidentially.

But there is HIPAA (Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act, which protects the safety of a patient’s medical information). It is a federal law that all health professionals must adhere to. If a patient says something and they are publicly putting something out there, there is nothing that we can do.

How do you respond within HIPAA guidelines?

Saran: We have carefully drafted responses that we post whenever the site allows for a response. These responses never ask for any PHI but rather are crafted to let the reviewer know we are aware of the comment and we encourage him or her to contact us directly. The response provides a phone number. The idea being not to address the comment directly online, but to provide the reviewer an avenue to directly communicate with us.  

What do you consider a “big win” from using the ReviewTrackers platform?

Robert: The biggest win is that ReviewTrackers helps raise awareness among all of the monitored medical staff — now they know that reviews are being left out there, and this is what they look like. We can get a sense of how they are perceived as a doctor — individually — and how their group or their specialty is perceived.

That’s the biggest value: making sure we have the tool in place. Everyone is aware that we can help them, and all physicians are aware that we can help them monitor their online reputation and call out anything that might be alarming.

How does ReviewTrackers help Nicklaus Children’s Hospital achieve its mission?

Robert: The marketing department has been monitoring social media and online review sites utilized by patients, parents, and guests to rate and review the hospital, outpatient services, and physicians.

ReviewTrackers has helped us manage a series of complex distribution lists of recipients who need to see all public comments and reviews made by patients and their families. By periodically sharing public comments and reviews with leaders, we ensure better transparency and are able to quickly address any concerns.