In most industries, the hard part of review work is getting people to write one. In a dermatology practice, the hard part is answering the ones that arrive without confirming who is a patient or what they came in for. What follows covers the whole loop: a single invitation every patient gets, replies drafted and approved before they post, and monitoring across the profiles a practice never created.
Book a free consultation →A dermatology practice has two front doors, and the people coming through them read reviews for different reasons. The medical side gets the person with a changing mole, a rash that will not quit, or a referral from their primary care doctor. The cosmetic side gets someone comparing three offices for a laser or an injectable. The first wants to know how fast they can be seen and whether the office handles insurance without a fight. The second is reading for care and craft. One star rating has to satisfy both.
Two more things about how people arrive here. Referrals search a name, not a category. Someone handed a card for a specific dermatologist types that name into Google, and whatever comes back on that name is the entire first impression, including profiles nobody at the practice ever created. And a practice that books weeks out collects reviews about the wait, not just about the visit.
Read a dermatology practice's one-star reviews and most of them are not about the medicine. That is a general pattern rather than a measured one. The complaints tend to be about hold times, how long it took to get an appointment, a front desk exchange, a bill that arrived larger than expected, or forty minutes in the room. Those are operations problems showing up in a marketing channel. Clinical care can be excellent while the rating reads as average, which is why this work starts with reading what is actually there instead of rushing to collect more.
The broader marketing picture for this audience sits one level up, on the dermatology page. This page is only about reviews: getting them, catching them, and answering them without saying something you cannot take back.
One invitation, worded identically for every patient, with nothing offered in exchange. Same wording, same timing, no sorting by who smiled at the front desk on the way out, no gift card, no raffle entry, no credit toward the next treatment. Asked that way, the rating that builds up over a year is a reading of the practice instead of a reading of who got picked. Screening who receives the public request is gating, platform policy prohibits it, and the FTC's 2024 rule is aimed squarely at fake and paid reviews. The general case for all of that already lives on the reputation management hub, and we will not re-argue it here.
The temptation in this field is specific. The cosmetic side of a practice usually has happier reviewers than the medical side, because a patient who waited weeks for a spot check and then opened a surprise bill is in a different mood than someone who just liked their results. Asking only the cosmetic patients would lift the average, and it would be gating. So the invitation goes to everybody, in identical words. The timing is set once and applied to everybody too, the same delay after every visit, instead of a staff member deciding case by case who gets asked and when.
The request itself has to be quiet about why the person came in. This is the part that surprises practices. A text that says thanks for coming in for your Mohs follow up is a disclosure sitting on a phone other people pick up. So the message names the practice, thanks the person for the visit, and links to the form. Nothing about a condition, a procedure, a department, or a provider's specialty. Uniform and compliant turn out to be the same message.
Where the ask comes from matters too. The patient list stays inside the practice's own systems, the request goes out under the practice name, and the tool is built to be HIPAA-conscious about what it stores and what it sends. That is a description of how the tool is put together, not a certificate anybody issues. What is allowed to leave the office is still your call, made with your own counsel. Collecting private feedback from an unhappy patient so somebody can fix the problem is fine, as long as the public invitation still reaches everyone the same way.
Elsewhere, the risk in reputation work sits in the ask. Here it sits in the reply. A public response written by someone at the practice can confirm things about a named person that the practice is not free to confirm, and the fact that the reviewer brought it up first changes none of that.
A reply we draft never does any of this:
What is left is short. Short is the correct shape here, not a weak one. Thank the person for taking the time. Say in one sentence how the practice handles that kind of concern generally, without attaching it to them. Give a real name and a phone number for anything further. Stop. Most readers comparing you against two other offices understand exactly why a medical reply reads that way.
Two process rules go with it. One person owns the login and writes the replies, so a frustrated staff member never answers from a personal account at ten at night. And a review that alleges harm leaves the review thread entirely: it goes to the practice's internal complaint process and to your counsel, not into a public back and forth. We draft, you approve, and nothing posts under the practice's name that someone at the practice has not read.
Reviews for a dermatology practice are split before anyone starts counting, because the practice holds one listing and every physician who sees patients under their own name holds another. The profile side of that work, categories, hours, photos and the practitioner listings themselves, is on Google Business Profile for dermatologists.
Past Google, health directories build a page for a licensed physician out of public license data whether or not anyone at the office signed up, and patients rate those pages. The cosmetic side has its own set of them. So a referred patient searching a doctor's name can land on a profile nobody has looked at in years, holding two reviews and a phone number that used to be right. A physician who has practiced under two names, or who moved from a hospital group into private practice, can end up with a page under each one, and the patient searches whichever name they were handed. Monitoring means knowing the page exists, deciding whether to claim it, and catching what lands there.
A hypothetical, to make the count concrete. Say a two-physician practice with a cosmetic side. That is one practice listing, two provider listings, recommendations on a Facebook page, and a handful of directory profiles created from license records. Call it six or seven places a patient could be reading, and only one of them reliably emails you when something new shows up. The point of monitoring is that you hear about the other five in the same week rather than next spring.
AI assistants are a newer version of the same problem. Asked for a dermatologist in your city, they summarize whatever they can find, and a stale profile plus a thin site gives them very little to work with. That is AI search work, and reviews are one of its inputs. Our AI visibility checker is free and will show you what those tools currently say about a practice.
One more, because this field differs. Showing a patient's review on your own site is a marketing use by the practice, a separate act from the patient posting it herself. Written authorization before a patient's words go on a practice page is the cautious route, and what gets used, and what it may say, is for you and your counsel. We never attach a name and a treatment to a review on a services page without that authorization in hand.
The rhythm is dull on purpose. New reviews get caught as they land across the profiles being watched. Drafts get written for the ones that need an answer, in your voice, and come to you for approval. You approve or edit, replies post, and the ones that belong offline get a name and a number attached instead. Nothing goes out under the practice's name unread.
The asking side runs on a one-tap request: a short link, a text, or a QR card at the checkout desk that drops a patient onto the review form in as close to one step as possible. Every extra tap loses somebody who genuinely meant to do it. We build that as a custom tool, that the practice owns outright, so nothing about the ask depends on a subscription somebody forgets to renew. We have built a one-tap review-request tool before, for a New Jersey glass and mirror shop. The dermatology version keeps the single tap and strips every clinical word out of the message.
Then there is the part most vendors skip: treating reviews as information. When six months of complaints are about hold times and how long a new patient waits for an opening, that is an operations finding, and telling you is worth more than six polite replies. So the reporting says what came in, what it was about, and what got answered. It never names a target rating, a review count, or a month when one will be reached. Whether a patient sits down and writes anything is a decision nobody at the practice, and nobody here, gets to make for them.
Nothing gets built or watched until the scope and the price are agreed. No open-ended monthly reputation fee with a fuzzy list of what you are paying for, no price per review, no tiers. We look at what is actually out there, agree on which pieces the practice needs, and quote it. Anything ongoing runs month to month, and you own the tool, the profiles and the reviews the whole time.
In practice the work takes one of two shapes, and neither one invents a number. As a build: the request tool gets built the way we build any custom tool, and the request tool typically lands in the lower part of the $1,500 to $4,000 range that most workhorse tools run. Optional upkeep is Tool Care at $75 a month per tool. Inside an ongoing engagement: when requests, monitoring and replies ride along with local SEO or SEO, that runs $1,500 to $3,500 a month for most businesses, and $3,500 to $7,500 a month in competitive metros or for multi-location businesses. Which band applies follows the same rule as the rest of our SEO work: the metro, and how many locations the practice runs.
Work that fits neither shape is priced flat after a free consult, not guessed at in print. For budget and timing, how much SEO costs and how long SEO takes are the honest versions. Orlando based, working with local service businesses nationwide since 2008.
If the site itself is the weak link, that is websites for dermatologists. If the real problem is that nobody finds the practice at all, start with local SEO for dermatologists. To start here, tell us what is happening, text (407) 694-2055, or ask for a free mockup.
No. Nothing in exchange: no credit toward the next treatment, no raffle entry, no gift card, not even a small one. Google's policy does not allow incentives for reviews, the FTC's 2024 rule bans any reward conditioned on the review being favorable, and in a medical practice an inducement attached to a patient interaction raises questions well beyond marketing. The ask is the same invitation to every patient, with nothing attached.
It depends entirely on what the message says. A request that mentions why the person came in, the department, the provider's specialty or the procedure puts that on a phone or in an inbox other people can see. A neutral request that names the practice, thanks the person for their visit and links to the form does not. We write one message, identical for every patient, with nothing clinical in it. How neutral that wording has to be for your practice is for your own counsel to decide.
No. That is gating, and it is a common way for a practice to get itself into trouble here. Screening who receives the public invitation based on who you expect to be positive is prohibited by platform policy and has drawn FTC attention. You can collect private feedback from anyone, any time, so the office can fix what is broken. The public ask still goes to everybody in the same words.
Not in public. Answering the specifics means confirming the person is a patient and putting clinical detail about them where anyone can read it, which is a larger problem than an inaccurate review. The public reply thanks them, says in general terms how the practice handles concerns, and gives a name and number for a real conversation. From there it goes to your internal complaint process, and if it alleges harm, to your counsel.
Someone at the practice does, not necessarily a physician. We draft, the person you name approves, the practice sends. Drafts come back in your voice and already follow the rules on this page, so nobody has to remember them at eight in the morning after a bad review lands. You can edit any of them, and nothing posts under the practice's name that someone at the practice has not read. One person at the office should own the login so replies never go out from a personal account.
That is normal. Health directories build pages for licensed physicians from public records, and patients rate them there whether the office ever signed up. We find the ones that exist for the practice and for each physician, tell you what is sitting on them, and you decide which are worth claiming. Claiming one means owning another inbox, so the answer is not automatically yes for every profile we turn up.
Yes. Nothing starts until the scope and the price are agreed, so you know exactly what you are buying. The request tool can be a one-time build on its own; ongoing monitoring and replies ride inside a local SEO engagement, and anything else gets a flat quote after the free consult. No standalone monthly reputation fee. It tends to work better alongside profile and local search work, because the same facts about the practice have to agree everywhere they appear, but it does not have to start there.
Reputation Management services · Dermatology practices: industry overview · SEO for dermatology practices · Local SEO for dermatology practices · Websites for dermatology practices · Google Business Profile for dermatology practices · Social media for dermatology practices · What should you pay? (free tool)
The first call is a plain read of what is already public: the practice profile, each physician's profile, the directory pages nobody claimed, and how the last few reviews were answered. Call or text (407) 694-2055, or email [email protected].
Book a free consultation → Or call/text directly: (407) 694-2055Tell us a little about the business and we will come back with an honest read: what we would fix first, what it costs, and whether you need us at all. Prefer to see work before you talk numbers? Get a free homepage mockup, built for your business, yours to keep either way.
Brandon reads every one of these himself. You will hear back shortly with an honest read on what we would do first, what it costs, and whether it is worth it for you.