Online Review Sites May Be Driving More Patients to Visit a Practice—Is Yours One of Them?

Urgent care has benefited from (or perhaps driven) the trend of patients wanting to see a qualified provider the same day they need to, without an appointment. Going hand-in-hand with that is the need to find such a provider. Enter social media. When people post a review on Yelp! or gift an urgent care center with a “like” on its Facebook page, people notice—and may be more inclined to visit that location. A new study from the Alegeus Healthcare Consumerism Index shows this could be more prevalent than you might have thought. In 2017, 60% of consumers researched a physician or healthcare facility online before deciding where to go for care (up 11% over the previous year). If patients have a good experience when they visit your urgent care center, they’re likely to let people know in more ways than ever before. As these data show, more people are listening, too. JUCM has covered this phenomenon from an urgent care perspective more than once. A couple of prime examples available in our archive are articles entitled Use Digital Marketing and Social Media to Attract and Engage New Urgent Care Patients and Calculating the Value of a ‘Like’: The Muddled ROI of Facebook Advertising.