The Only Reviews That Actually Matter + A Special Update

In this episode I share my thoughts on patient reviews and how they relate to micropractice, including

• why I have a different opinion on this compared to most doctors
• why they are especially important in DPC and micropractice
• the only type of reviews I believe really matter and why
• how I typically ask for reviews 
• a special update on one of our very special Micropractice Mamas 

Everything at Micropractice Mama is currently on SALE through 5/26/25 at midnight. Here are direct links to learn more about what's available:

The Micropractice 101 E-Course ($600 off)

The Website-in-a-Week Package ($500 off)

The Pre-Launch Bundle ($1000 off)

If you're enjoying this pod, I would love to connect! Real human feedback is so deeply appreciated. Here are a few ways to reach me:

Connect with me on IG @soniasinghMD
Email me at sonia@micropracticemama.com
Learn more at www.micropracticemama.com

The Micropractice 101 E-Course is available NOW. Learn more or enroll here: https://micropracticemama.thinkific.com/courses/micropracticemama

And if you're not sick of my voice yet, check out my other podcast with Dr. Rebecca Berens: The Antisocial Doctors on Apple Podcasts or Spotify!

Sign up here for the Micropractice Memo to get weekly tips, updates and resources on all things micropractice and motherhood in medicine: https://micropracticememo.myflodesk.com/s51y9r3knn

Transcript

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Speaker 0:01

Hey doctors. You're listening to the Micropractice Mama Podcast, a podcast for women physicians who are striving to practice primary care sustainably and creatively with autonomy, authenticity, and joy. I'm your host, Sonya Singh, internist, PCP, and proud mother of two human babies, one for a baby, and one life-changing micropractice. I wanna empower you to push past whatever is holding you back and make the leap to launching a practice. That aligns with your values and priorities, and finally allows you to take care of your patients, your family, and yourself in the ways that you want and deserve. Are you ready to make the leap? Let's do it. Hey doctors. So I am recording this on Tuesday morning. So it is the day after I did my webinar for this quarter, which was on building your professional brand. Thank you to everyone who showed up. I sent out the replay video for those who missed it today. So if you're one of those people who missed it and is somehow not on my email list and would like to see the replay video, feel free to shoot me a message. You can email me at sonia@micropracticebaba.com. I'll try to get back to you as soon as possible with that link. But anyway, it was a great night and I think it was a successful webinar, and I hope I shared a lot of helpful information. Stay tuned until the end of the episode because I am gonna share a little bit of fun stuff. I have some updates on some of my previous Micropractice Mama 1 0 1 interview guests And I will share a little bit about the product that I released yesterday in the webinar as well, in case you missed that. But anyway, let's move on to today's topic. So today's episode is about. Patient reviews, and I know a lot of people don't like this topic. A lot of people don't like reviews. I actually was inspired to do this episode because a few days ago there was a post on like physician community or one of those Facebook groups where somebody was complaining about patient reviews and. Every comment on the post was just like, reviews are stupid. They should be illegal. You shouldn't even read them. Like you should just completely ignore it. Don't, don't even engage. And I think that's the general consensus among a lot of physicians is just yeah, they're stupid. Just don't even look at them. Like just ignore them completely. And maybe I have a bit of a hot take here 'cause I don't totally agree with that. And by the way, let's just acknowledge man what a privilege that for a lot of us, it's not true for me, but I think for, a lot of people in, especially in different specialties and depending on the environment you work in, you can have a bunch of two star reviews in. You're still gonna have a packed clinic and patients will still come and see you. It just indicates like how little patients feel that they have a choice and how little they are able to shop around. But anyway, I wanted to share my thoughts on reviews and some practical strategies that I think are helpful for anybody who's considering Micropractice or in Micropractice. First of all, I wanna acknowledge before I say anything else about reviews, that I am a hundred percent aware that reviews do not reflect the quality of care or the quality of a doctor like that is absolutely true. I know plenty of fantastic, brilliant, caring doctors that probably have mediocre or bad reviews online for a variety of reasons. And then I know doctors that, I think should be sued for malpractice that have a bunch of five star reviews, and it's true that because there's this information asymmetry in medicine, a patient may not be able to, understand especially immediately after a visit, whether the medical advice that you gave them or the treatment you recommended was right or wrong or was good or bad medical advice. Like maybe you encourage them to do conservative measures for their URI 'cause it was viral, they may walk outta there feeling like you didn't give them anything, you didn't do anything. And they may feel sick for a few more days, and that's just how it is. And they may not understand that was the right medical decision. I like to think that if you're given, the time and the appropriate amount of time and support to do your job, that even in those situations, you can communicate effectively enough that the patient understands why you're making those decisions and is happy about it. Patients are patients and sometimes they still don't get it. We all know that there's a lot of ways that you can garner good reviews. For instance, just giving everyone antibiotics and steroids and ordering MRIs for every a and pain, like you will get plenty of people that love you for that. But that's not necessarily good medicine. So I just wanna acknowledge first off that I totally agree that reviews do not reflect your quality and oftentimes they're a bunch of baloney. But the reality is reviews are here to stay and they matter a lot. Okay? Especially in micro practice or direct care in which you're in a situation where somebody is actually going to actively seek you out and possibly pay you hard earned money, they're gonna want some evidence that you are who you say you are, and they're gonna need a little bit more support in that decision. And reviews are a very important piece of that. One thing that I notice a lot about people who have honestly any reviews, but often the bad reviews is they're not even about the medical decision making. They're like about all the other stuff around that. Like it's about the weight or the hassle it was to schedule, or someone that was rude to them on the phone or at the front desk or the, they may ask me the questions and the doctor asked me the same questions and I was there for my knee and they wanted to talk about my mammogram. Like the, I feel like in primary care those are like often the, come or billing complaints that was every, almost all of my bad reviews saved like a handful of ones, but most of them in the past were billing complaints, and that, the beauty of micropractice in one sense is that you get rid of a lot of that stuff. There's not a lot of other people that can tank the review for you. 'cause it's really just you. And honestly I do agree that our healthcare system does a crappy job of a lot of those things in large part because our skills and time are. So undervalued that we have to see this incredible volume of patients in order to, make a decent salary for our training and education. And the whole system is so fragmented and there's so much administrative burden and waste that you know, the patient navigating it. Is going to have a pretty crappy experience in a lot of situations. And I do think it's fair for them to be able to say whether they had a good experience or a bad experience. Somebody on one of those threads was like, see, it's not like in a restaurant where, people can just like immediately know like how the food is. You don't, these patients don't have the ability to know whether they're getting good or bad medical care. My take on that is it's really not necessarily about. Whether, I don't think that analogy holds because for instance, if you were really wanting to go to Applebee's, okay, and you went to Applebee's and you had the bloom, blossom onion or whatever the thing is that they had there, and you were like, this is fantastic. You had a great old time and you left and you were like. That was a five star experience. And then let's say instead you accidentally walked into like the French laundry when you wanted to go to Applebee's. Okay? This is obviously not something that could happen, but you get the point, like you walked into a much, like a fine dining kind of experience somehow, and then you got that stuff put in front of you, okay? You might rate that like a one star. And that doesn't mean that, that food was bad, obviously, and it doesn't mean that the apples bee, the Applebee's food was fantastic. It's really more about setting appropriate expectations and having those expectations match with what the person gets. And I think that mismatch is where a lot of problems happen. And I don't think it's. As simple as just saying, oh, patients don't know. So they don't, they, they shouldn't even be writing reviews. I think that's a very naive, superficial in denial attitude about reviews. So anyway, that's my rant leading up to the practical tips I'm gonna share. So my approach to reviews is if you choose to expend zero energy on it and you just ignore them and you don't look at them and that you know it's just not part of your life, then. You're at the mercy of the outliers. It's gonna be like a couple people that maybe love you and a couple people that think you're like the worst person ever. And there's gonna be a handful of reviews and somebody, a patient who's looking at that information is not gonna really know what to make of it. And you're gonna miss out on the huge swath of people like the 80 or 90% that probably think you're fine and great and you could be capturing that appreciation and that goodwill, and you're just missing out on it. So I think if you just expend a little bit of energy soliciting some, encouraging I'm not gonna use the word soliciting. Encouraging some good reviews from people who have actually seen you and like you, so not like your friend or like your sister or whatever, like actual patient reviews. Then when. The inevitable, left fielder shows up where it's just like some random person that's just mad that you didn't give them their oxycodone or whatever the unreasonable request might have been, then you're protected, and that maybe that will be there and a reasonable person who's looking and sees 20 reviews that are all good and say, detailed things about why you're good and then sees one from somebody who says she won't refill my pain pills. I think they can draw their own conclusions about that and it's, it should not hurt your business or, that's nothing to take personally. That's what I think. And, I value your time and energy, so I don't want you to put extra energy towards something that is not going to pay off. And so I want you to use your energy and time on this really wisely. And so my opinion is that there's really only one set of reviews that really matters. And that is Google reviews. Okay. So let me describe to you why I think Google Reviews are the only ones that matter. And then I'm gonna share just a couple of brief tips on how you can encourage some encourage people to write reviews. Okay, so I would say there's three main reasons that I think Google reviews are the most important and much more important than Press Ganey scores collected by your organization or health grades, or, WebMD reviews, or any of those other reviews. Okay. And the first one of those reasons is SEO Search Engine optimization. So if someone goes and searches your name, Sonia Singh, md, the first thing that's gonna come up, there's gonna be a bunch of websites lifted, listed on the left side, and then the top right corner. You've seen this so many times for so many things. You've searched the top right corner, it's gonna say your Google business profile, which is Sonia Singh, md. It's gonna have your address. The phone number, quick links call, website, and then right under there it's gonna be your star rating. So even if you have not went out and created a business profile, they just get automatically created. And it may not, it may just be like a profile that's just a shell, and it's not been claimed by anyone. It may be a profile that's been claimed by your employer, but the Google business profile is such a powerful tool. Because like I said, when you search your name, or for instance, you search internist in Houston. You're gonna get a list of a bunch of those Google profiles and when you look in maps, you're gonna get a list of a bunch of Google profiles. And so if you claim that Google profile and you optimize it, and by optimize it, I mean make sure it has all the correct information that's up to date, change the photo to a nice professional photo so it's not just like a random Google satellite image. You can put a little, a brief description of who you are and what you do. So you can write that in and then build up that star rating. If you can do that, then not only are you controlling one of the top results that someone's gonna see when they're searching in your area, but you're going to rank higher and higher. Over time when somebody searches internist in Houston or PCP in Houston. If you've dabbled at all in SEO for your website you know that it's like a money pit. You can spend tons and tons of money on, people who claim to optimize your SEO. But this is such a simple, easy, free strategy where you can control what is at the top of the page because it's always gonna be your Google business profile. And you can actually link a website to your Google business profile. So if you've just created a brand new site for yourself or for your practice, typically when it's a brand new site. It's gonna take a while for it to rank, highly in the search results, but you can link it to your Google business profile and then it's automatically linked to that profile. So it's going to be there at the top on the right hand side. SEO search engine optimization is, in my opinion, the number one reason that the Google reviews are really gonna be the most valuable of your reviews. All the other types of reviews, Healthgrade, the WebMD, doctors.com and whatever the other places are, those are always gonna show up lower in the search results and not as highly as that. I definitely would focus on Google reviews. Okay. The second reason Google reviews I think are really helpful is, this is true for, all review sites, but you need that social proof. Like you can say you're awesome and even your patients can say you're awesome, but your patients are not gonna be walking around wearing a T-shirt that says you're awesome. They're probably only gonna say it to people who are asking, actively asking about it, and. It when you're doing it through Google, their voices, like your patients vouching for you. Again, it's always gonna be right up there at the top, on the right side, and Google even does like a, it aggregates reviews, so it'll show you highlights, like kind of the way if you search a product on Amazon, it'll be like users like blah, blah, blah. It'll give you like, here are the top highlights and it'll just give you very brief little fragment quotes from a few of the reviews that. It thinks, captures what a lot of the reviews are saying. So you know, again, like I said, especially in micro practice, people are actually actively shopping around and trying to make a decision about this, and they need a little bit more encouragement and a little bit more of a push and evidence that you are who you say you are. And this. Piece of social proof is critical for that. And it's not enough to have a testimonial on your website because you control that and you can pick that. I think people, people have learned to lose trust in a lot of these other, Yelp and things like that. And I think at this moment in time, I'm recording this in May, 2025, I think people still do, believe Google reviews, I don't believe the sponsored when it's sponsored and there's 500 reviews. Honestly I find that to be a little questionable. But, for a small business like yours or mine, that's not sponsored. I think I think building up your reviews does definitely make a difference to, to how people view your business and you. So number one is SEO. Number two is social proof and visible social, highly visible social proof, I should say. And then number three, and this is something I don't think doctors don't think about until they're in the situation and then they're like, oh crap, I should have thought about that earlier. Number three is the permanence of Google reviews. So like at my first job, I think there were hundreds of reviews collected about me. 'cause my institution, both of my institutions that I worked for are very aggressive about getting Press Ganey surveys on people. And so the patients all felt like, oh my God, yes, I've left you. So many reviews, and they were all collected internally and they were all displayed internally. So they were displayed on my, the institution's website on my page. And so when I left that job and when I left my subsequent job, all those reviews, thousands of reviews just disappear. They're poof, they're gone one day and you can never find them again. And they're in the ether. And that's a really sad thing. When you. Worked in a place for years and years, and you've built all this trust and goodwill with patients and these relationships, and they have wonderful, kind things to say about you, and they're taking the time to write those out and then they're gone forever and you leave with nothing. That is a true tragedy. I recently had a student in my course Rita Zel, who's a PCP in Florida, and she actually works in a, one of the. Clinics that focuses on seniors, and so all of her patients are over 65. Prior to her enrolling in the Micropractice Mama course, she had just, I don't know, a handful of mixed reviews. She doesn't have a population that's really huge on going online and writing those types of reviews. And so when we started working together, one of her goals was, okay, I'm gonna build this up. I've gotta optimize this profile. I'm gonna, I'm, I've gotta start soliciting some, or encouraging some social proof and some reviews. And in two months she gathered 150 reviews and they're all real reviews. Again, it's not like her friend, her sister, it's like actual patients that have seen her and known her for years. And if you look at the reviews, they're so sweet and genuine. Like it's not just oh, I saw her through Zocdoc and I saw her once and she was nice. It's like people are like, Dr. Bezel has taken care of my mom for three years and was like, just done such an amazing job. And, they're really genuine. Sincere, thoughtful reviews, and that is going to make a huge difference for her when she launches her solo practice. Someone's gonna hear her name, they're gonna see her on social media. They're gonna see her name in a Facebook group. They're gonna punch it into Google, and what's gonna be the first thing that shows up? She knows will show up even if she's got a website. We don't actually know if that's gonna be number one on Google for at least, it's often not immediately, I will tell you from experience. But we know that her Google profile's gonna show up at the top and there's gonna be 150 plus five star reviews. So that is huge. Imagine if she did not do that. I think what a lot of doctors do is they're just like, oh crap. Like I have two or three reviews. Oh let me tell my friend and my neighbor and my sister and my mom and let them leave some reviews, but she, the, she did it, in my opinion, the right way. And if she had not done that, then, again, she just. Wouldn't have the same digital presence. Her name would not show up as quickly in searches for, PCP in Orlando, Florida. And she would not have the same social proof that is now going to help convince patients that she is as awesome as she says she is. Totally awesome. And I'm gonna share, she shared with me a little bit about her strategy, and I will share a little bit about that in the next section. Permanence is a huge feature of Google reviews. So even if your organization, your employer that you work for right now is managing your Google profile, which, if it's a big organization and they're, they've got their act together and they're a well-oiled machine, then they should be managing your Google profile and responding to reviews and making sure it's optimized. Less organized groups will not be doing that. Even if they're managing it now and they won't let you take it over, when you do leave that job or when you do give your notice and you say, I wanna take that over, you can then claim yourself, your own self as your business. And you get to keep those reviews. Even if your location changes like your name, Sonia Singh, md. That should belong to you and you should be able to keep those reviews. So make sure people are not leaving reviews on, for instance. Like mine would've said Memorial Herman West University, Sonia Singh, md no. It's gotta just be like your name, md. That should be the profile that you are sending patients to, to leave reviews. Okay. So how do you get reviews? There's all kinds of services and like gimmicky type ways that you can, it'll like auto text a patient after you, they leave. There's all kinds of ways you can do it. If you're gonna do one of those kind of automated ways, I, I would talk to your institution about that. But, if you're just a regular person, I think you can very easily start getting a few reviews from just simply doing a couple of things. Number one. Is just asking for them. And to me, like a good opportunity to ask is anytime someone, a patient expresses gratitude, you know where a visit went really well or you had a good save, or you went outta their, outta your way to do something for them. I think just saying. Yeah. Thank you. It was my pleasure. Like I'm happy to help. I'm so happy I could do this. If you wouldn't mind, I know it sounds silly, but if you could just leave me a Google review, it means a lot to me. It helps people find me, it helps other patients find my practice and I do read all of them and they mean a lot to me. And it's something that, will stick with me throughout my career. So if you could do that, I would so appreciate That would be a great thank you to me. My birthday is next month. I'm planning to actually send out my newsletter and say, Hey guys, it's my birthday. Please don't get me anything. I don't need anything at all. No physical stuff is necessary, but if you're feeling inspired, you can leave me a Google reviews. That would be awesome. Sorry, that's my timer. I have to make a call, but that's another way you can ask. So I would say number one, ask them, have it be sincere. Explain to them why it's important to you. I used to say it's, I'm growing this practice. This is how patients find me. And now since I'm full, I tell people, I, I would love for you to leave me a review. It's gonna protect me when inevitably someone comes along and gets mad that I don't wanna give them a vaccine exception and I don't wanna prescribe them oxycodone. And usually I get a chuckle lot of that too. So anyway, ask it in your voice and in your personality. Be sincere, be honest. And, a lot of people will respond to that. So that's number one. Number two is just make it easy for them. Don't make them go digging around for it. You can have a little auto text or something like in my Spruce app I have an auto text for my Google review link. So if somebody says something like that or we have that conversation, I just send that over. I also have a QR code at the end of my new patient packet that I hand out. And after I have the first visit and hopefully I've knocked their socks off and then I go through all the next steps and how to contact me and a little bit more about the practice and give them that whole. Beach. And then at the end I say, and if you've had a good experience, I would so appreciate if you could leave me a Google review. And this is the Q QR code to do that. And so many people will go home and they'll do the QR code and, write a review right then. So those are my thoughts on patient reviews. I'm curious what your thoughts on patient reviews, do you just totally hate them? Do you think we should completely ignore them? Do you think it makes sense? To maybe put a little bit of effort towards them. I'm always curious to hear what's on your mind and what you're thinking. So feel free to reach out to me and share your thoughts and your feedback. You can email me at micro sonia@micropracticemama.com, or you can DM me on Instagram. My handle is at Sonia Singh md, S-O-N-I-A-S-I-N-G-H-M-D. Now, lastly, I wanted to share a quick update from one of my previous micropractice one-on-one. Guests, Dr. Heather Jackson, whose practice is called Become Health in Salt Lake City. So I interviewed her right before she was about to launch her practice after she had done three or four months in the Micropractice Mama course, and she was one of my best students. Showed up to all the office hours, did all of the hours of one-on-one consult. Took, did all the modules and took notes. And I feel like she is a great example of what is possible with the right tools and guidance. And so I wanted to share an email that she sent me recently. So in response to me asking how things were going with the practice, she says it's going really well. Oh, whoops. She says it's going really well because I'm a micropractice. I've been able to break even AF already after two months. I have 34 patients and counting. I think it will grow pretty organically and I don't plan to pay for any marketing and word of mouth is already starting to spread. I have to remind myself that not only is DPCA gift for me, but it is also a gift for my patients and they really appreciate it. It says a lot about our medical system and how sad it is that all I have to do is offer humane a humane option, and they jump on it. In contrast to this awful system in my previous clinic, I look like a superstar and I don't even have to do much. Thanks again for all you do for the Micropractice DBC community. Keep up the great work, Heather. Isn't that so sweet? This is a doctor who, Heather had been practicing for over 20 years in her place where she opened her practice. So she was in a unique position. She is doing no social media. She is, as she said, done like no paid marketing. And she's already at 34 patients. So my dream for the people who do my course is that they all do better than I did. I want them, Katie Pennix doing the same. She's doing better than I did at her stage. And I really think, we get to stand on each other's shoulders and keep building on the knowledge and experience that, season DPC doctors already have. And so my goal is that. The course and the knowledge that I'm sharing just gets better and better, and people can do this with more and more ease. And what I really love and what I've noticed about the students who actually take my course versus people that I've casually mentored, previous to this, is that the ones who take my course have already made, they've had the mindset shift of knowing that. Their time is valuable and that other people's expertise and experience and knowledge is really valuable. And so they can do the math in their head of thinking, okay, this course, for instance, right now on sale is $2,400. If I spend $2,400 now, how many hours of my time and my life am I gonna save? And how many expensive mistakes am I not gonna make? Is that worth it? And honestly, if you do that math of how much your time is worth per hour and how many hours doing a course and having the information handed to you is going to save you, it's a no brainer. But I think a lot of doctors like, honestly, probably the majority of them, get stuck in this scarcity mindset and also don't know the value of their time. And so they get stuck in this mental space where they just cannot part with the money and they cannot convince themselves of the value. And I hope in this next week you can make that mental shift yourself because the course is on sale right now. It's 2,400 when it's normally 3000. It is going to be on sale until Monday, May 26th at midnight central time. So you have a little less than a week to mull it over and make your decision. My suggestion to you is to binge all of my free content, binge the podcast, listen to as many episodes as possible, and tell then, so you can decide, okay, is this enough? Can I work with this and, carry on and do my thing? Or do I want more support, more structure, one-on-one guidance. More of a clear formula of how to get from point A to point B. And if that's the case, I want you to be in the course. I would welcome you to the course. It's a really lovely community of people and I would love to see you there. I am also offering now another product, which I just. Can't adequately explain at the tail of a podcast episode like this. The other service is called website in a week, and basically it is for employed physicians who are, for instance, optimizing their Google profile, building their professional brand, trying to establish an online presence. This can help you grow a panel. This can help you shift a panel in a direction that you wanna of, patients that you wanna serve. It can help you create a runway for micro practice or for other endeavors, speaking gigs, book deals, whatever it is that you wanna do in the future. I find that a lot of my students who are in this position where they've just given notice and they need a website right away, but their practice website and their practice is not really. Anywhere near that yet they would need a website urgently. And the options for website design for physicians are often like total ripoffs. And you get you don't need like a zillion page website. You need something very basic with, an email signup little bit of an information about you, but something that looks warm and inviting and authentic to who you are and communicates your mission and your values and, your underlying core brand, not just, a pretty website. I did this for two of my students and I realized it was, something that I was good at and could do pretty quickly and could, serve a need that I was seeing in my students and also a couple of my friends who were not even in my course. So if you're interested in having me. Make your website in a week, you should look into that product as well. I'm gonna put the link for that product in the show notes as well as link to the full course. Everything, all of it is on sale. If you buy the course and the website design package together, it is on super sale, like $1,500 off the normal price. It's honestly a bargain. And go do your research and see what a really nice website costs from a professional designer. I am not a professional designer, but I'm a doctor who understands, and I'm, I think I'm a really good copywriter and a really good storyteller. So I really deeply care about how this website looks and that it's communicating your essence well. And I don't know that all designers care about that. But anyway do your research into the comps and you'll see that, it's a pretty good deal that I'm offering. So anyway, check out all of that in the show notes. Thank you so much for listening. As always, thank you for being in the webinar. Thank you for just being part of this broader community. I feel so grateful to have found this little space on the internet to talk to you guys. So I am gonna take a little break. I'm going to California, or California as my son calls it which is home, sweet home for me for a couple of weeks and taking a much needed vacation. So I will go silent on this podcast for a couple weeks, so don't worry about me. I haven't died, I haven't gotten sick. I'm just. Taking a break and I'm also taking a break from the newsletter, but I will be back. So until then, take care.