Abstract
Purpose :
To compare the monthly percentage of patients performing online ratings of retinal physicians when prompted by paper solicitation versus electronic solicitation for a private retinal practice.
Methods :
IRB approval was determined to not be required for this study. The number of patient visits were tabulated from the practice management system for each of 3 offices on a monthly basis for an initial period (IP) of 6 months (paper solicitation for all offices) and second period (SP) of 12 months (electronic solicitation for one office only). We also recorded the monthly number of google online physician reviews for each of 3 offices with the same physicians for the IP and SP. The number of monthly reviews was divided by the number of patient visits to convert it to the percentage of patients who performed an online review to make comparisons across different offices and times with different patient volume. The monthly percentage of patients who performed an online review were compared within each office between IP versus SP using a paired two tail T test for each office. The percent of monthly reviews was also compared in the SP between the one office with electronic solicitation (ES), and the two offices with paper solicitation (PS1 and PS2), using a paired two tail T test.
Results :
The average number of monthly visits for the 3 offices in the IP were 564 (ES), 539 (PS1) and 1518 (PS2). The average number of monthly visits for 3 offices in the SP were 660 (ES), 577 (PS1), and 1520 (PS2). The monthly average percent of patients who gave an online review for 3 offices in the IP were 0% (ES), 0.0304% (PS1), and 0% (PS2), and in the SP were 0.980% (ES), 0.0428% (PS1), 0% (PS2), with a significant change seen only for ES (P<.01). The difference between the monthly percent of patients who performed an online review between the ES vs PS1 and ES vs PS2 in the SP was significant for both comparisons (p<0.01).
Conclusions :
Electronic solicitation appears to provide a significant increase in online ratings when compared to paper solicitation in the same office as well as when compared to paper solicitation in other offices.
This is a 2020 ARVO Annual Meeting abstract.