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Hospital Reviews: CareDash Continues Market Leadership With New Vertical Focus

It’s been a few years since I had a chance to sit down and chat with one of my favorite CEO’s in the healthcare space, Ted Chan. Ted is the Founder and CEO of CareDash, the fastest growing healthcare search directory in the US. I’ve always been a fan of what Ted and his team have been doing in the space, since they’ve made it easy for companies like InboundMD and healthcare providers to promote themselves on their site and properly manage their listings.

When I recently heard that CareDash was moving into the hospital space, and building out their offerings in this vertical, I thought it’d be a great time to sit down again and get an update on what’s happening at CareDash

Garrett: Ted, we talked in 2016 about CareDash when it was just beginning its growth curve. How “big” is CareDash today?

Ted: Yes, InboundMD has always been ahead of everyone in terms of identifying our growth and helping practices and hospitals understand the CareDash approach to healthcare reviews.

CareDash now has nearly 2M patients searching for care or reviewing a healthcare provider, practice, or hospitals. So those that listened to you when you said we were up and coming received many patients!

Garrett: Thanks for the compliment! Wow, 2 million visits. That’s great. You mentioned you were excited about your growth in hospital reviews? Is this driving more patients to CareDash?

Ted: Yes, CareDash is now a market leader in hospital reviews, especially as a vertical-specific player. We have double-digit patient reviews, including 20+ for most of the larger systems.

It feels like we’re the market leader for vertical-specific sites in hospital reviews, with Yelp, Facebook, and GMB having a fair amount of feedback as well.

Garrett: This is quite the accomplishment in such a short time, especially given you’re competing against legacy players. How do CareDash hospital reviews differ from what’s out there?

Ted: One big thing is that our methodology is fairer to hospitals and health systems than vertical sites. CareDash has many hospital reviews from real users, but the way we survey our patient users has less “motivated complainer bias.” Thus, I think the CareDash hospital reviews provider a more accurate view of real patient satisfaction.  

We think something between 8 to 9 out of 10 patients walks out of the hospital satisfied.

But typical web reviews make hospital looks much worse. This negative bias in hospital reviews is a big deal because people are walking into their care journey with a negative mindset about the care they are going to get, and that’s not good. The scale is just off because of the motivated complainers

Garrett: I’ve always been impressed with your methodology, fake review detection capabilities, and focus on transparency. What should we expect from you in the hospital space?

Ted: CareDash is working hard on its medical center listings product now that we have an excellent and growing hospital review data set.

It’s never perfect – CareDash has achieved meaningful statistical significant on larger hospitals, but it will take more time for smaller ones. Those are critical patient decision points – do I go to a bigger hospital that’s further away.

Now that we also have this data, we need to make it easier for patients to research hospitals and compare them in ways that are meaningful to them. We can rank and compare them in ways that are patient-friendly as consider where to go.

We’re also working on developing metrics on patient experience and outcomes in crucial services areas, such as birth experience and emergency room satisfaction.

Garrett: As you know, I love review data and using it to make improvements to patient care and experience. Where do CareDash solutions fit in for hospitals and health systems?

Our business model is centered around sponsored listings. In any area, there are typically many 4 and 5-star providers, be it primary care, specialists, or dentists.

A sponsored listing gives a hospital or health system the ability to reach the patient eyeballs first. That program is driving solid ROI for our HCP partners.

CareDash featured listings are high ROI slice of the hospital marketing that is very close to the decision point when potential patients are searching for care. They start with symptoms, conditions, or procedures, and then they move on to actively researching a doctor, a hospital, or a practice. That’s where we sit.

In terms of the process of searching for a care provider, we sit at a critical intersection for search engine optimization, pay per click, word of mouth, and social.

Healthcare searchers are inherently local, and getting seen at the point someone is using Google or CareDash to search for care is pretty valuable. With a properly optimized profile with headshot and bio, we can see direct callouts for appointments and well as clicks to hospital websites to research further.

The patient may bounce further around the web to figure out to confirm that’s whom they want to see, but having that doctor or hospital profile so close to the point of care is vital. Those profiles also get shared, so sometimes that person is searching for themselves but comes across a physician or service that’s perfect for a neighbor, friend, or family member. The clicks can flow into and enhance a retargeting campaign across social and paid search channels.

Garrett: Thanks for spending this time with me Ted and sharing this fantastic updates. I’m excited to get our hospital clients engaged with CareDash and looking forward to seeing what you do next!

For more information about CareDash’s hospital reviews, please visit https://www.caredash.com/find-a-hospital.

Garrett Smith

Garrett is the Founder, and Chief Marketer at InboundMD. Garrett has been successfully leading internet marketing campaigns for health care practices across the US for almost a decade. He's a frequent speaker at events, and author of "Book Now! Internet Marketing for Healthcare Practices", and the host of The Practice Marketing Podcast that details how successful practices are winning online.

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