When to use patient surveys vs. online reviews

Patients are no longer passive participants in their care. Empowered and emboldened by the digital age, they've evolved into informed consumers, making active choices. From Googling symptoms to comparing provider ratings and reading reviews, patients form their first impressions long before any clinical interaction takes place. For healthcare organizations, those impressions have never mattered more for patient acquisition and brand growth. 

To stay competitive, healthcare organizations must double down on their brand perception and patient retention—starting with a deeper understanding of how today’s healthcare consumers think, feel, and decide.

And that starts with collecting feedback.

The feedback engine: What patients say, where they say it, and why it matters to healthcare organizations

There are two primary avenues for collecting patient feedback: experience surveys and online reviews.

Both have unique benefits. Surveys capture structured insights about specific aspects of the healthcare journey and delivery. Reviews, on the other hand, reflect real-time sentiment while shaping public perception and helping organizations attract new patients. Together, patient experience surveys and online reviews complement each other—creating a compelling, full-circle view of the healthcare journey that fuels both strategic growth and continuous improvement.

The power of patient experience surveys

Patient experience surveys are designed to collect defined, detailed feedback. They’re private, secure, and ideal for understanding the experience, measuring satisfaction, testing new initiatives, and identifying operational gaps.

Why and when to use patient experience surveys

Patient experience surveys are powerful tools for identifying where care falls short and where it can be improved. They help pinpoint operational gaps—like breakdowns in communication, frictions like long wait times, or inconsistencies in the experience of care—that might otherwise fly under the radar. Surveys also support broader quality and compliance goals by tracking key metrics like customer satisfaction scores (CSAT), net promoter scores (NPS), and effort scores over time, so organizations can benchmark progress, respond with agility, and proactively enable service recovery as needed.

Beyond operational insights, surveys play a critical role in strengthening patient relationships. When patients feel their feedback matters and effects change, they become more engaged, loyal, and likely to return.

Surveys also collect demographic data—which adds another layer of value and can identify inequities in care. This lets organizations address disparities more effectively, tailor interventions, and ensure all patient voices are heard.

Limitations of patient experience surveys

While patient experience surveys are a critical source of insight, they do come with certain challenges, including:

• Lower response rates can skew insights: Longer questionnaires can contribute to survey fatigue, often resulting in fewer responses and incomplete data.
• Designing good surveys takes skill and strategy: Effective survey design requires expertise—poorly constructed questions can introduce bias, limit insight, or lead to misinterpreted results.
• No direct competitor comparisons: You can compare your performance to market benchmarks, but not directly to named competitors—making it harder to gauge how you stack up against specific organizations in your region or specialty.

On their own, surveys may provide an incomplete view—especially without the right design, distribution strategy, and supporting tools. To maximize their impact, organizations should integrate them into a broader, more comprehensive patient feedback strategy.

The strategic importance of online reviews

59% of consumers rely on online search to find healthcare providers. And a critical part of that discovery process is online reviews. Online patient reviews are public reflections of the patient experience, often posted on platforms like Google, Healthgrades, or your organization’s website. But they’re no longer just about reputation—they’re a strategic asset. They shape consumers’ first impressions, influence provider choice, and play a critical role in search visibility, making them essential for both brand strength and patient acquisition.

Why and where to use online patient reviews

Beyond shaping perception, online reviews offer tangible strategic advantages. High-volume, recent, and positive reviews play a key role in boosting SEO, helping your organization surface more prominently in local search results. Google prioritizes review activity—in volume, spread and sentiment—making reviews a critical factor in discoverability. In a competitive market, a strong review presence doesn’t just enhance visibility; it helps tip the scales when patients are deciding between providers.

Reviews also offer valuable insight into how your community perceives your brand—in their own words. They serve as a near real-time feedback loop, giving you quick visibility into patient sentiment without the lag of traditional feedback channels. Positive reviews can double as marketing testimonials, reinforcing your brand story and providing social proof across campaigns. Most importantly, they influence new patient decisions at key moments in the consumer journey—making them not just a reflection of experience, but a driver of growth.

What online patient reviews don’t capture

While reviews offer visibility, influence, and reach, they come with important limitations healthcare organizations should be aware of.

• Broader, less detailed feedback: Reviews often provide broad impressions but lack the detail needed to uncover specific issues in the care journey.
• Missing demographic insight blurs key trends: Without demographic context, it’s difficult to identify and address equity gaps across patient populations in a meaningful way.
• Pressure to respond—fast: Negative reviews can quickly impact brand perception when left unaddressed. Today’s consumers expect prompt, thoughtful engagement—making response management a key part of your reputation strategy.

Make your feedback work harder and smarter

As we sit here in 2025, it is no longer enough to just collect feedback. A true patient-centric strategy mandates collecting feedback using surveys to understand key gaps in the journey and then leveraging that same feedback to win credibility with other consumers in similar journeys.

This is the reason we launched solutions like transparency and review publishing. These solutions allow you to amplify patient feedback online so you can truly turn happy patients into brand advocates.

To learn more about how Press Ganey can support your patient acquisition and brand strategy, reach out to a member of our consumer experience team.