The value here is not the five steps. It is that skipping one makes the next one not work. Google reviews are one of the biggest trust signals for patients choosing a doctor. This system uses well-timed, automated requests to build your review count steadily — without begging, bribing, gating, or annoying patients. What you may ask for, and what you may do with a review once it lands, depends on where you practise, so the rules of your market come first.
The 5 steps, in order
1. Audit
Where do you stand? We look at review count, average rating, response patterns, what competitors are doing, and which review rules apply in your market.
2. Automate
SMS and WhatsApp requests go out automatically to every opted-in patient — no one on your team has to remember to ask. Where asking is itself restricted, such as for individual doctors in India under the NMC 2026 guidelines, we leave this step out.
3. Time
Requests go out soon after the visit or discharge, not two weeks later. Every patient gets the same request; picking only the ones you expect to be happy is review gating, which regulators in the US, UK and Australia treat as misleading.
4. Respond
Every review gets a reply within 24 hours. Personalized, not templated, and never confirming that the reviewer is a patient. Google rewards this.
5. Showcase
Reviews are reused on your website, social media or ads only where local rules allow it, and only with the patient's written consent. In markets that ban testimonials, including India under the NMC, Australia (for clinical care), Singapore, Saudi Arabia and Kenya, reviews stay on Google where patients left them.
Why the order matters
Each step produces the input the next one needs. Audit without Automate produces activity that nobody acts on; Showcase without the steps before it is a report about work that did not happen. The common failure is starting at the end — buying the tool, running the campaign — because that step is the one with a purchase order attached.
What it looks like when it is working
You can tell which step you are on without asking anyone. The numbers you review each month change as you move through it: early on you are watching whether the inputs exist at all, later whether they convert, and eventually whether the thing runs without someone driving it. If your reporting has looked the same for six months, you have stopped moving through the sequence.
How we run it
Those are the disciplines this sits on. The framework is not a product and there is nothing to buy on this page — it is how we sequence an engagement, published so you can run it yourself if you would rather.
The honest caveat
Treat it as a diagnostic as much as a plan. Most practices reading this will already be doing three of the five steps — the useful question is which two are missing and whether that explains the number that is not moving.
