A guide to embedding feedback & review collection in your EHR platform

For modern healthcare practices, patient experience is the new frontline for growth. This guide explores how embedding automated feedback and review collection journeys into your Electronic Health Record (EHR) can systematically turn positive patient experiences into powerful public reviews on sites like Google, while transforming negative feedback into opportunities for service improvement and patient retention.

Examples of feedback & review collection in action

Automated Net Promoter Score (NPS) feedback and review routing

This journey automates the collection of post-visit feedback and intelligently routes patients to the appropriate channel based on their satisfaction level.

• 24 hours after a patient’s appointment is marked as ‘complete’ in your platform, an SMS is automatically sent asking them to rate their experience on a scale of 0-10.
• If the patient responds with a 9 or 10 (a Promoter), they receive an immediate thank you message with a direct link to your user’s Google Reviews page, encouraging them to share their positive experience publicly.
• If the patient responds with a 7 or 8 (a Passive), a different message is sent, thanking them for their feedback and asking if there's anything specific that could have made their experience better.
• If the patient’s response is between 0 and 6 (a Detractor), a message of apology is sent, asking for more details about what went wrong.
• The detractor’s verbatim feedback is then used to automatically create a new, high-priority support ticket in your clients' helpdesk platform, assigning it to the practice manager for immediate follow-up.

High-value service follow-up and testimonial generation

This journey provides tailored follow-up for patients who have undergone significant procedures and identifies opportunities to generate powerful testimonials.

• The journey is triggered for any patient who has had a service tagged as a ‘High-Value Procedure’ in your platform.
• One week after the procedure, a personalised SMS is sent from the lead practitioner, checking in on the patient's recovery and asking if everything is going well.
• If the patient replies with a positive sentiment, a follow-up message is scheduled for two weeks later, asking if they would be willing to share more detailed feedback about their experience.
• If this detailed feedback is highly positive, the system asks for their permission to use their anonymous comments as a testimonial on the clinic’s website.
• If the patient agrees by replying ‘YES’, their details are automatically added to a ‘Testimonial Candidates’ audience in your clients' marketing automation platform for a separate marketing campaign.
• Any negative reply at any stage immediately triggers an internal email notification to the head of patient care for a personal follow-up call.

Proactive review generation for loyal patients

This journey identifies long-term, satisfied patients who have not yet left a review and encourages them to become brand advocates.

• A segment of patients is created who have had more than five appointments in the last two years but have no record of providing feedback or leaving a public review.
• The journey begins with a personalised email from the clinic manager, expressing gratitude for their loyalty and asking if they’d be willing to share their positive experiences to help others find quality care.
• If the patient clicks a "Yes, I'm happy to help" link in the email, their record is updated in your platform, and they are directed to a simple landing page.
• This landing page contains direct, pre-populated links to the clinic's profiles on Google, Yelp, and other relevant local review sites.
• If the patient doesn't interact with the email within one week, a gentle follow-up SMS is sent with a direct link to the same review landing page.
• If a patient clicks a "No, thank you" link, their record is updated to exclude them from review requests for the next 12 months.

Benefits of adding feedback & review collection to your EHR platform

By automating feedback & review collection, EHR platforms can drive real value for healthcare practices:

Attract new customers: By embedding a patient feedback and review platform, you can automatically guide satisfied patients to leave reviews on public sites like Google, turning their positive experiences into powerful social proof that builds trust and drives new business.

Improve service: Systematically collect structured feedback from both happy and unhappy customers. This creates a continuous loop of high-quality data to identify specific operational weaknesses and make targeted improvements to the overall customer experience.

Increase customer rebookings: Demonstrate a commitment to customer satisfaction by addressing negative feedback directly and privately. By resolving issues effectively, you can turn a poor experience into a positive one, salvaging relationships and preventing churn.

How to add review collection & feedback to an EHR

So, you're convinced of the value. The next question is how to embed review collection within the core EHR platform. Several approaches exist, each with implications for development resources, time-to-market, and ongoing maintenance:

Custom development: This offers maximum customisation. However, it requires significant research and development, dedicated expertise, substantial upfront investment, and continuous ongoing maintenance to adapt to new needs. Time-to-market can be very long.

White-labeling a specialised solution: For many EHR providers, the most efficient path is to integrate patient reputation management into my platform using a specialized white-label solution. These white label tools for patient reputation management allow you to embed proven capabilities quickly and seamlessly. This approach is often referred to as headless patient engagement, where a powerful backend engine for communication and workflow automation is seamlessly integrated into your EHR's existing user interface (the "head").

White-labeling software lets you integrate pre-built features or entire modules from a third-party provider directly into your own EHR platform. These features are presented seamlessly to your users under your brand and user interface. This dramatically accelerates your product roadmap by allowing you to instantly offer sophisticated, new capabilities without dedicating internal resources to build and maintain them from scratch.

For most EHRs, using white label tools for patient reputation management is the fastest and most scalable solution.

Benefits of white label

Save time. Integrate powerful new functionality into your platform in a fraction of the time it would take for an internal build, dramatically accelerating your product roadmap and speed to market.

Focus your resources. A white label solution lets your development team concentrate on enhancing your core EHR features and unique value, rather than diverting resources to build adjacent capabilities.

Fully built solution. Immediately leverage a mature and scalable engine built and refined over years, offering proven capabilities to your users from day one.

Eliminate tech debt. The white label provider manages the technical upkeep, keeping your team agile.

Introducing Aperture by Pendula: An embeddable patient engagement engine

Aperture by Pendula is a white label solution that powers some of the world's leading B2B SaaS platforms. We combine a visual workflow builder with native communication channels and powerful data integrations, allowing you to embed a complete patient engagement engine into your EHR in just weeks.

Key Capabilities:

Visual workflow & journey design: At the heart of Aperture is a powerful visual builder. It enables users to design sophisticated communication journeys with features like smart decisioning and flexible automation. You can choose to embed the full builder for maximum user flexibility, or offer pre-defined workflows for standardised use cases.

Data integration & triggers: Layer powerful data connectivity onto your workflows. Aperture's patient engagement API allows you to trigger journeys from user behaviour in your platform or data changes in other systems. This also enables rich audience segmentation based on real-time, unified data.

Omnichannel communication channels: Complete the journey with reliable communication. Aperture features native, scalable channels—including Email, SMS, RCS, and WhatsApp—that can be orchestrated by your workflows to deliver the right message on the right channel at the right time.

HIPAA-compliant by design: Built with the security and privacy requirements of healthcare in mind, ensuring all patient data and communications are handled in a compliant manner.

Implementing feedback & review collection with Aperture by Pendula

Let's take our example from above and see what it would look like as an actual flow inside your EHR platform:

Here is a recipe for building your Automated Net Promoter Score (NPS) feedback and review routing flow in Pendula:

• Webhook Trigger: This flow is initiated by an event in your EHR platform when a patient's appointment is marked as 'complete'. Your EHR platform will send a webhook payload to Pendula containing the patient's details.
  
  • Action: Configure your EHR platform to send a POST request to the unique URL provided by this Pendula trigger node. To accommodate the 24-hour delay, this should be configured in your source system to trigger the webhook 24 hours after the appointment's completion. The payload should include the patient's mobile number and name.
• Conversation Node: This node sends the initial NPS survey question via SMS and waits for the patient's reply.
  
  • Action:
    
    • Outbound SMS: Configure the message to ask the patient to rate their experience on a scale of 0-10. Example: "Hi {{firstName}}, thanks for your recent visit. How likely are you to recommend our clinic to a friend or colleague? Please reply with a number from 0 (Not at all likely) to 10 (Extremely likely)."
    • Replies: Set up a "Free reply" path to capture any numerical response from the patient. The response will be stored in a merge field like {{conversation_1.messageBody}}.
    • Reply Expiry: Set an appropriate reply expiry, for example, 48 hours. This is the configurable wait time for a reply before the 'No reply' path is taken.
• Criteria Split Node: This node directs the flow down different paths based on the numerical score the patient provided. The node will evaluate the {{conversation_1.messageBody}} merge field.
  
  • Action: Create three distinct paths with the following rules: Branch
    
    • Promoters:
      
      • Path Label: "Promoter"
      • Rules: Set up two rules with OR logic.
        
        1. Rule 1: {{conversation_1.messageBody}} is exactly 9
        2. Rule 2: {{conversation_1.messageBody}} is exactly 10
    • Passives:
      
      • Path Label: "Passive"
      • Rules: Set up two rules with OR logic.
        
        1. Rule 1: {{conversation_1.messageBody}} is exactly 7
        2. Rule 2: {{conversation_1.messageBody}} is exactly 8
    • Detractors:
      
      • Path Label: "Detractor"
      • Rules: Set up seven rules with OR logic, one for each number from 0 to 6 (e.g., {{conversation_1.messageBody}} is exactly 0, OR {{conversation_1.messageBody}} is exactly 1, etc.).
    • The default 'Other' path can be used as a fallback if the reply is not a number.
• Promoter Path
  
  • Outbound SMS Node: Sends a thank you message and a link to your Google Reviews page.
    
    • Action: Configure the SMS body with a message like: "Thank you so much for your positive feedback! We'd be grateful if you could share your experience on our Google Reviews page: [your-google-reviews-link]"
• Passive Path
  
  • Conversation Node: Sends a thank you message and asks for more detailed feedback.
    
    • Action:
      
      • Outbound SMS: Configure a message like: "Thank you for your feedback. We're always looking to improve. Is there anything specific we could have done to make your experience a 10/10?"
      • Replies: Set up a "Free reply" path to capture their verbatim response. This feedback can then be stored or reviewed as needed.
• Detractor Path
  
  • Conversation Node: Apologises and asks for specific details about their negative experience.
    
    • Action:
      
      • Outbound SMS: Configure a message like: "We're very sorry to hear your experience didn't meet your expectations. To help us understand and improve, could you please tell us a bit more about what went wrong?"
      • Replies: Set up a "Free reply" path to capture the detailed feedback.
  • Make a web request Node: This node takes the feedback from the previous step and creates a high-priority ticket in your helpdesk platform.
    
    • Action:
      
      • Request Type: POST
      • API Endpoint URL: Enter the API endpoint for creating a new ticket in your helpdesk system.
      • Authentication: Select the appropriate authentication method for your helpdesk API (e.g., Bearer Token, Headers).
      • Request Body: Construct a JSON payload that maps to your helpdesk's ticket fields. Use merge fields to dynamically insert the patient's feedback and details.

As you can see, Aperture by Pendula is a powerful solution for seamlessly embedding feedback & review collection in your EHR platform.

Take the next step with Aperture by Pendula

Interested in white-labelling Aperture by Pendula to quickly and easily embed automated feedback & review collection in your EHR platform?