maculahealthcare - Blog , Public Healthmaculahealthcare - Blog , Public Healthhttps://www.maculahealthcare.com/blogs/public-healthSun, 09 Nov 2025 14:28:33 -0800http://zoho.com/sites/<![CDATA[Negative feedback and hospital reputation]]>https://www.maculahealthcare.com/blogs/post/Negative-Feedback-Hospital-Reputation

“I recommend not to visit this hospital. They just suck money and the treatment is pathetic”

Hospital Reputation

Such negative reviews really makes the hospital buyer question the seller about the reputation of the hospital.

As part of our transaction advisory services, we come across many such scenarios when the buyer asks the seller about the online reviews. In the course of discussion, one question of the buyer challenged the reputation of the hospital. “Why so many people has given bad reviews about the hospital? Is this the reason why you want to sell the hospital?


”A small token of advise to all our fellow doctors especially a small hospital owners wherein you do not have a dedicated team to manage the hospital reputation online. You need to be cautious when you deal with your patients. Especially a first timer who has taken an appointment through an aggregator platform”

Booking through third party service providers.

Patients who has booked online through third party websites are mostly first timers. They do not have time to come to your clinic and wait to see you, and hence they book online and visit you. If you are late, then there are 50% chances they may give a negative feedback. Just because of this, your hospital reputation is brought down not because of your clinical calibre, but because the patient was not patient enough to wait for their turn.

Many such negative feedback on various third party sites has literally put our client down and questioned their ability to convince the buyer on the reputation. This is one such case and the same can be applicable to the practicing doctor. Their reputation will be at stake and google give ratings based on this. What we as consultants wish to advise is to initiate the dialogue with the reviewer and come to an understanding and request them to remove the negative feedback. This is the only way that you can have positive and good rating.

Rating is a double edge sword wherein one side, it helps the doctors to gain reputation whereas because of non-technical (clinical) issues, you end up getting negative reviews and questions your calibre of treating the patients which is no where connected.

The negative feedback may be really genuine or completely false. If it is genuine, then you need to take care of it and respond to the reviewer. You can convince him and request him to change the review / delete after promising that this will not repeat. If it is false, you can flag it inappropriate and contact google for the same. Some of the contents are not promoted by google and check this for detail. If the negative feedback falls in this, you can easily get rid of them to protect hospital’s interest.


Friends.. be careful and manage meticulously

]]>Thu, 07 Jul 2022 15:53:35 +0530<![CDATA[Why cant be cost of healthcare services controlled?]]>https://www.maculahealthcare.com/blogs/post/cost-of-healthcare-service

Factors determining the cost

There are many factors to determine cost of the service. It is not possible to standardise the cost of services across the country and hence it is logically not possible to control the price of the service in a hospital

What are the determinants of pricing a service?

Many factors determine the cost of the service and hence the price. It starts from the cost of the land where the hospital is erected to the cost of the resources offering the service.

To list few of the cost line items, contributing to overall cost of the services are

  • Cost of the land
  • Cost of the building
  • Rentals if the hospital is not owned
  • Cost of the consumables
  • Cost of the human resources – doctors, nurses and other staff
  • Cost of medicines
  • Cost of marketing

Reasons Explained

Doctors do ask us what would be the cost of the hospital project, we exclude the land cost for the simple reason that it differs from place to place.


A doctor wanting to come up with a small hospital in a town hardly thinks of hiring a hospital consultant. whereas the team wanting to come up with a big hospital in a city like Bengaluru hires consultants like us to plan, execute and even commission the hospital. All these will be invariably passed across to the end users.


Few doctors will offer services in a rented place and as per the cost-benefit analysis, the cost of service in a rented place is higher than in an owned place.


Consumables vendors will discount if there are more numbers and hence the cost of consumables in a bigger hospital is less when compared to a small hospital, just because of the number of consumables ordered.


Hiring a nurse in a town is more challenging as a nurse will always prefer to work in a good set up where one can master their skills. This is the case in most of the small hospitals. In big hospitals, because of demand, the nurse does not stick to one hospital and have the tendency to change jobs for better pay. This is the same even with Doctors.


When it comes to Medicines, the more the orders the more discounts. Hence in smaller hospitals, it will be costlier sometimes compared to the bigger hospital. But this does not mean that the bigger hospitals will charge less. They will try to cover the overhead expenses that are not the case in small hospitals


Marketing cost is an effort that the hospital makes to pass the information to the public. People will only get to know about the services when they advertise. So, the hospital does spend on marketing and the expenses will have to be covered within the revenue.

Why is the price of the same operation is different in different hospitals?

Logically speaking, it will be different mainly because of the available services. It is because the doctor is not the same, the rentals are not the same, the nurses are not the same and most importantly the type of services that are offered are not the same. The hospitals are right in their own way unless they charge keeping the high margin. That is where the problem arises.

Who is controlling this?

Nobody can control this because of many reasons. But understanding these ambiguities, Insurance companies are categorising hospital based on the type of services they offer. Though the cost differs, patients will be taken care of in the empanelled hospitals. Understanding the economics, insurance companies dictate the hospital and to some extent control the price and empanel them.

Does NABH controls the cost?

No, NABH certification is an indicator that the hospital is accredited and follow some standards while they offer services to patients. It tries to bring uniformity for all the stakeholders of the hospital – hospital management, healthcare professionals and end users – patients.


QCI is an autonomous body, to certify NABH for hospitals based on the type of service provided. They do not involve in defining the price of the service but only contributes and make sure the services are at part with the standards set. Many people asks why Government control the price of hospital services and you can visit this link to get a glimpse of why it is difficult to do so.

]]>Thu, 07 Jul 2022 15:53:35 +0530<![CDATA[Medical articles to educate and mobilise new patients]]>https://www.maculahealthcare.com/blogs/post/how-to-attract-new-patients

Attracting new patients

It is difficult for doctors to believe that online articles can mobilise new patients to them. Doctors are aware of many online platforms and service providers who bring in patients, and their services to bring your clinic or hospital name on top of the list. But articles? doctors do not know the logic of attracting new patients. This is a one time effort to attract new patients.

Power of good medical articles

Many of the doctors may not be realising the power of online articles in getting new patients. In a highly competitive hospital industry in India, being more privately run services, it is very important to attract patients online. This gives a chance to doctor to educate the patient and hence to create a sense of trust, especially for new patients. My other article ‘Google Patients‘, briefs you the patients’ behaviour on Google to look for good articles. So I feel it is good to understand how patients behave in the growing access to information.


Only 0.1% (1 in 1000) or maximum 0.5% of the doctors knows this secret, and such doctors may not be hardcore clinicians. They will be helping their friends/colleague to mobilize new patients.

I think a good example will help a doctor understand better. Let us take a case, a patient suffering from Appendicitis. Let us take 2 scenarios

Before visiting a doctor 

He will definitely not know the term ‘Appendicitis’ and he will be using keywords like ‘Pain abdomen, vomiting, fever etc. The keywords are mostly the ‘Symptoms’ that he could comprehend in his words. It will be simple English that is easily understandable.

After visiting the doctor


By this time, he would have known the probable diagnosis or differential diagnosis. Hence he will start using this as keywords in Google.

I am taking an example keyword ‘right side pain abdomen‘ and this is one of the poor keywords as this is not used in Google by a good number of people. You will see ‘0’ search for this keyword.


Now you can check out the top 3 keywords


Keywords (Top 3)  12 Months Searches Monthly Average
 Stomach Pain60,500 searches1k to 10k
Abdominal Pain27,100 searches1k to 10k
Lower abdominal pain18,100 searches1k to 10k

You visit www.ads.google.com with your Gmail account and register for AdWords. Once done, you search for keyword planner under tools. You will be able to do explore all the keywords related to your area of specialization




The image shows the patients behaviour while they look for symptoms in Google. This is a huge number and every month in the city Bengaluru alone, you are witnessing 1k to 10k searches with those keywords.

So now what? What can doctors do?

Doctors, especially after completing the PG (MS, MD, DNB or Diploma) will have sufficient free time. My piece of advice for them is to engage in drafting medical articles. Macula Healthcare can guide you with specific tools to make your article masterpiece.  We can teach you the know-how of publishing good articles on your site, provided if you have one. I bet you, over a period of time, we can even track how many patients reads this and visit you for further assistance. Just ask a simple question to your patient. How did you get to know about you? Many end up saying through Google and specifically through their articles. This will boost your involvement into drafting articles.


In the whole activity, you try to educate the patients before coming to you or even after coming to you. As the days go on, you will not have time to draft new articles, but yes you can update the same. Overall you can optimize your consultation time year on year.

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