What sort of rating should a dental practice have on the internet?


Commonly people are checking out the ratings of businesses on the internet before choosing a business to go to. This applies to dentists as well. Commonly, patients coming to my practice for their first visit comment that they are impressed by the number of nice reviews my practice has.

I am not much different since I  read Yelp reviews of restaurants before deciding where to  go. I live in Forest Hills and it seems for the restaurants that I like (not fast food, but not expensive either) , the average rating is about 3.5 to 4.0.  The restaurants usually have a lot of reviews and the ratings seem fairly accurate.

The same can not be probably said of reviews for dental offices on the Internet. I looked at the ratings of dentists in my Zip code and most practices seem to fall in a sweet spot range of 4.5-5.0 . Although many of these practices are well established and ongoing concerns, the quality of their dentistryvaries from practice to practice and I do not believe their internet rating necessarily accurately reflects the quality of the dentistry provided.

First, I believe that there is some grade inflation for many of the dental practices. This is because, most people, unless they are extremely unhappy, wont go post reviews on their own, without some prompting. This means that most of the reviews probably reflect the fact that the reviewers were asked or reminded to write the reviews.  Secondly reviews are not anonymous and most of the posters know that their dentist will see their review and who wants to disappoint their dentist, especially if they want to continue going to them in the future?

Interestingly, some fine dental practices don't have many reviews at all and this is because they are not asking their patients for reviews. Probably because of this lack of effort, they sometimes unfairly have a low rating. This probably reflects what I have observed: that happy patients don't spontaneously write reviews, but angry patients do! Every business has some unhappy clients and dental practices are no different.

If you are a dental practice today, you should have a plan in place that will help encourage your patients to write reviews on Google, Yelp, Zocdoc or wherever. If you need reassurance of this , Try googling a successfully growing practice in your area. You will probably see a number of glowing reviews. Now google your own practice; hopefully you'll see the same phenomenon. If not, it's probably time to do some research and give some thought to how you can improve your reputation on the internet!

If you are a potential patient seeking a dentist and reading through a practice's reviews I would to address this to you. When I look through my reviews, most are from patients who have been treated in my office for many years (most more than 10 years) and their content is about the quality and the type of service my practice provides. Most of my reviews do not emphasize the decor of  my office or the type of equipment I use. Often dental practices have reviews where it mentions solely how pleasant a recent visit was and how nice the office  or the doctor was , but it is clear that the reviewer has not had many years of service from the practitioner and their staff. Remember that dentistry is not really like a restaurant where the food is consumed and the rating reflects how pleasant the reviewers experience was, but is a service where our primary goal should be  to help maintain the health and beauty of the mouth and to be truly beneficial our efforts must stand the test of time!



from Ask Dr. Spindel - http://lspindelnycdds.blogspot.com/2017/10/what-sort-of-rating-should-dental.html - http://lspindelnycdds.blogspot.com/

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