About social listening

• What is social listening?
• Why is Healthpoint developing this?
• Differences compared to other online health service ratings platforms

Frequently asked questions

How to respond to Feedback

Terms and conditions for people placing feedback

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The Healthpoint social listening interface enables people to publish and send feedback directly to a health service, regarding their experience with the service. Feedback is collected in the context of; “Would you recommend this service to friends and family?” with a yes/no answer and a 5-point rating scale (extremely unlikely to extremely likely). There is also the option of providing a comment. Health services are able to monitor and respond to feedback.

Why is Healthpoint developing the social listening platform?

Consumers’ feedback about their experience with a service has become the global norm for web enabled directories. Healthpoint have updated the website functionality to enable NZ health services to receive, publish and reply to consumer feedback. Social listening (publishing feedback) demonstrates to your patients that your organisation is open, aware and focused on patient experience.

Between August and October 2018 a baseline survey (n=334) was conducted by the metro Auckland DHBs to understand how the public currently access information about GP practices, and what information they would find useful.

The evaluation confirmed that Healthpoint is the most widely used online platform to find GP practice information. The Healthpoint website has a large audience and is the New Zealand national health services directory, with over 400 000 visitors per month. Over 60% of responders highlighted that being able to access other people’s reviews and feedback for a practice was either very useful or useful for informing their choice.

With widespread use of the internet and social media, how people review health services has changed significantly. People can now review their healthcare practitioners or health services via multiple social media platforms such as Google reviews etc. Services are often not aware they are being reviewed, and are therefore not managing or actively reviewing this information and/or lack the mechanism to do so.

The Healthpoint social listening interface has been developed in consultation with metro Auckland healthcare professionals. It has been piloted in the Waitemata DHB region for over a year, and is based on the learning from the United Kingdom’s National Health Services Choices website. Seventy nine percent of feedback received across all primary and secondary services has been positive.

How is this different to other online health service rating platforms?

• Healthpoint has a large audience, 435 000 visitors per month.
• Ratings based on health services rather than individuals.
• Does not give an averaged overall rating from all reviews, therefore providing less incentive for dishonest provision of feedback.
• Providers are sent feedback in real time, via email, and have the ability to publish a response.
• Anonymous – contact details are not collected and there is no risk of using details for secondary purposes such as marketing.
• Ability to respond – services can respond which gives a health service the ability to take a conversation off-line.
• No incentive payments or competitions – less opportunity for dishonest use.
• Ability to report and remove defamatory comments immediately.
• Friends and Family question is tested, and used by the United Kingdom National Health Service.
• Easy to find – Google optimised.
• No conflict of interest. Healthpoint is not owned by a health organisation.
• Ability for health services to opt-off this functionality (via Healthpoint administrator login).