I had an interesting experience recently from two Yelp reviewers. One person gave me a one-star review because she got a bruise after Botox/Xeomin injection to reduce wrinkles in the forehead. Another left a one-star review because she was unhappy with her breast lift to correct very saggy (ptotic) breasts after massive weight loss.

Obviously if I’m using these examples, then I believe they were unfair complaints. In the first example, a bruise is a very normal potential outcome after an injection. Luckily, they’re temporary. And in the second example, the patient’s results were so amazing we would have posted a before and after photo online if she would have allowed. Clearly there were other issues at play in the second example. Some issues can’t be fixed with cosmetic surgery and I should have identified those issues preop. So that’s on me. But to be clear, we make patients happy every day and within the Yelp realm, we still have 4.5 stars out of 5 from over 50 patient reviews.

So what’s my point? It’s not simply that the customer is not always right. These two reviewers actually revealed an interesting thought process, in statistical and psychological terms, known as a confirmation bias.

The customer is not always right!

So let’s talk about confirmation bias. According to Wikipedia, confirmation bias is “the tendency to search for, interpret, favor, and recall information in a way that confirms one’s preexisting beliefs or hypotheses.” Often, when we’re on Facebook and reading controversial articles, we end up in an echo chamber. Hearing the same arguments that reaffirm our own pre-existing beliefs. This confirms our own feelings, blocking out all other dissenting opinions.

In the case of the Yelp reviewers they both said the same, but opposite, thing. I know that sounds like an oxymoron but hear me out. The patient receiving non-surgical treatment (Botox/Xeomin injections to the face resulting in a bruise), stated that I should stick with only surgical treatments since she noticed all of the glowing 5-star Yelp reviews were from my surgical patients. And the surgical patient that had the breast lift noticed that all of my 5-star reviews were from patients receiving non-surgical treatments!

In their mind, they only noticed the 5-star reviews from patients receiving the opposite treatment they received (surgical reviews in the case of the non-surgical patient, non-surgical reviews in the case of the surgical patient). But if anyone takes a critical look at all of my reviews, they would very quickly see they’re evenly distributed between surgical and non-surgical reviews. In fact, the surgical patient that said I only had 5-star reviews from non-surgical patients obviously didn’t recognize that the very FIRST review on the page (which was 5 stars) was from a surgical patient! Again, adding up to a cumulative 4.5 stars out of 5.

So based on their confirmation bias, they only saw reviews that reaffirmed what they already believed. That I’m good at the procedures they didn’t receive! If the non-surgical patient believes I’m good at cosmetic surgery and the surgical patient thinks I’m good at non-surgical services, what are we to believe? Taking their two reviews together, I’m either good at both cosmetic surgery and medicine…or bad at both! Needless to say, the customer is not always right.

Click here for the original blog post written by Dr. Kaplan for BuildMyBod.

The post The customer is not always right. An example of confirmation bias. first appeared on Plastic Surgeon San Francisco | Pacific Heights Plastic Surgery.

Remove Online Reviews of Doctors

“Doctors and other healthcare providers are reviewed on online review sites, similar to other businesses.  We, however, are not like those other businesses.  These online reviews are an open forum to the public written by patients, who are allowed to share their stories and photos explaining their experiences that they had with their doctor.  Often these reviews are negative and accuse the doctors of complications or mismanagement from medical visits, treatments and procedures that they have had.  Unlike other businesses, we, the doctors, are not allowed to respond back, to defend our case or share any facts or photos to the public because of HIPAA and medical privacy laws.  We, the doctors, find this extremely unfair and unjust.  If patients are allowed to review us, then we should be able to defend the review and be able to state publicly our side of the story.

This is a clear cut prohibition and violation of our rights to defend ourselves and to protect our names and reputations. These reviews that are often one sided, impact our livelihood and medical practices. They also cause emotional distress to the doctors, who cannot explain their side of the story that is out in the public forum for others to read and believe.   Also, many doctors fearing poor reviews will overprescribe and overtest just to “satisfy” patients.  We, the doctors, should not be pressured to do things to get good reviews.  We want to provide medical care not customer care. This effects the care to our patients and society as a whole.

We ask for immediate withdrawal of ALL doctors and providers, who are affected by HIPAA and medical privacy laws, from being reviewed on these online review sites. Until we can defend ourselves, a review should not be posted to which we cannot respond.

This petition will be delivered to:

Yelp

United States Department of Health and Human Services

U.S. Senate

U.S. House of Representatives

CEO, Healthgrades

CEO, Yelp”

The Doctor’s Perspective

It’s an interesting petition. I don’t know the legal limits of passing a law to force a particular review site (Yelp) to disallow reviews for a particular group (doctors). However, the petition makes two interesting points. First, that doctors feel they can’t always respond to a review because it may violate the patient’s privacy rights (HIPAA). Secondly, doctors feel pressure to overprescribe or over-treat to satisfy patients, a topic I’ve addressed here.

Regardless of which side of the debate you’re on, please leave constructive comments below.

Click here for the original blog post written by Dr. Jonathan Kaplan for BuildMyBod.

The post Remove Online Reviews of Doctors first appeared on Plastic Surgeon San Francisco | Pacific Heights Plastic Surgery.

How BuildMyBod can help your Yelp Reviews

As you can see in the genuine Yelp review above, the patient was very happy with her experience in general. But in an unsolicited portion of an already unsolicited review, the patient explicitly mentions how the Price Estimator on the doctor’s website was the key factor in choosing her doctor.

Obviously she needed to have a good experience with the doctor during the consult to move forward with surgery. But the first step is getting the patient in the door. The ability to check the doctor’s pricing through the Price Estimator gave the patient the opportunity to check estimated pricing before the consultation. Thus alleviating the risk of sticker shock at the end of the consultation when it was time to review the cost of the procedure.

This is way better than simply using a static menu of pricing on the site. With the Estimator, the doctor is able to capture the patient’s contact info when they check pricing. In other words, the only way the patient can check for automated pricing information is if they first enter their contact information along with a “wishlist” of procedures they’re interested in.

Video, how the Price Estimator works

To check pricing from a doctor near you, click here.

Click here for the original blog post written by Dr. Jonathan Kaplan for BuildMyBod.

The post Who knew? BuildMyBod is great for Yelp reviews! first appeared on Plastic Surgeon San Francisco | Pacific Heights Plastic Surgery.