“What do your patients find when they Google you?”

Debra Phairas, president of Practice & Liability Consults, LLC, asked her audience this potent rhetorical question at the start of her AAO 2025 session, “How to Manage Your Online Presence and Win Against Negative Reviews."

Whether you obsessively monitor online reviews by patients or can’t bear to look, what current and former patients post about your practice informs (and sometimes misinforms) the opinions of others who might be seeking an ophthalmologist. As evidence, Ms. Phairas pointed to a 2025 RepuGen survey, which found that 73.28% of prospective patients consider those reviews when choosing a provider. In that same RepuGen survey, nearly 60% of respondents said they had more trust in providers who respond to reviews.

“Marketing your practice now includes more than assessing and correcting misconceptions about your practice on review sites such as Yelp, HealthGrades, or RateMDs,” Ms. Phairas emphasized. She recommended assigning a staff member to monitor your online reputation monthly and report problems to the practice manager. This should include confirming that your addresses and phone numbers are up to date on Google.

Throughout her presentation, Ms. Phairas provided additional tools for proactively building and maintaining a positive online reputation, attracting and keeping patients, counteracting negative reviews without adding fuel to the fire, and knowing when to use litigation. Below are some of her recommendations.

Building a Positive Reputation

• Ensure reasonable wait times: Patients’ likelihood of recommending a practice correlates to how long they must sit in the waiting room (0-5 minutes=80% likely to recommend; 6-15 minutes=72%; 16-30 minutes=65%; 31-45 minutes=58%; and 45 minutes=less than 50% likely to recommend you).
• Prevent negative comments by being proactive: Encourage feedback on your own website via an email address dedicated for that purpose.
• Maintain social network accounts on Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, and others. “Joining these websites gives your practice a public face and enables continuous monitoring and management of your online image,” Ms. Phairas said. 
• Post signs in the waiting room or at the front desk asking happy patients to “Like Us on Facebook” or “Follow Us on Twitter” by scanning a QR code linked to your practice profile.
• Go old school: Have a physical box for “compliments and complaints,” read them, and take measures to resolve the problem or praise your staff, accordingly. Alternatively, post the office manager’s business contact information for patients wishing to comment.
• Respond to patient complaints in a timely manner.
• Have new staff sign your office personnel policies and procedures stating that they will not use social media sites during work hours unless they are specifically charged with updating your website or profiles.
• Communicate social media policies: Make it clear that harassment of staff or revealing patients of the practice via social media is a breach of confidentiality that can be grounds for termination.
• Encourage best practices for safe internet use: To deter patients from viewing unofficial websites that may spread inaccurate or biased medical information, link your website to professional medical or specialty societies, such as www.aao.org/practice-management/patient-education and www.mayoclinic.com/health-information.

Dealing With Negative Reviews

• Don’t overreact: Getting into an argument online only makes things worse for the practice.
• Don’t respond publicly: Always maintain patient confidentiality.
• Try to work with the patient to resolve the issue: A satisfied patient can remove their negative review from the site.
• Do not resort to creating fake reviews: The practice could be pay a very hefty fine for encouraging employees and friends to post positive comments. A cosmetic surgeon in New York was fined $300,000 for this violation, Ms. Phairas warned.