In what is arguably the busiest city in the nation, Felipe Cordero is a busy practice manager. Cordero manages the three-location Eye Care & Surgery practice in New York City, a group of six Board-certified ophthalmologists and one optometrist.
Led by father and son Dr. Arthur Cotliar and Dr. Jeremy Cotliar, Eye Care & Surgery joined PatientPop in September 2019. The practice currently boasts an online review average star rating of 4.7 out of five and enjoys the benefits of PatientPop integrating directly with AdvancedMD, the group’s practice management system of choice.
As Cordero explains, when becoming a PatientPop practice, one of the key goals for Eye Care & Surgery was to improve their online presence. They now have more than 40 number 1 Google search result rankings for relevant SEO keywords including [best new york city ny ophthalmologist] and [optometrist new york city ny]. In one of the most competitive markets anywhere, the results of this success have yielded an average of more than 200 new patients a month since June 2020.
To learn more about the practice, we spoke with Cordero, who told us how his busy practice has used PatientPop to improve their online reputation and successfully expand their online presence.
Why did you initially choose PatientPop?
Felipe Cordero: We chose PatientPop because we wanted a better presence online. We wanted to be found easily when people were searching for an eye doctor in New York or the Bronx, or cataract surgery. We did have some reviews, but with PatientPop, our presence online is a lot better. We have a lot of patients that find us on Google due to PatientPop.
How have you seen your practice benefit from sending patients feedback surveys?
We’ve been getting a lot of good reviews. Some people leave them on the website, some other people leave them on Facebook, and some others on Google business.
We try to provide the best customer service as possible, and also the results that our patients get — that’s also the reason we get good reviews. But PatientPop has obviously helped us have a better presence online. That’s the bottom line.
Online reputation makes such a big difference. Now, people go and look for anything online, and if they find you easily, they will come to the office even more easily.
Do you feel that PatientPop allowed you to recover quickly from the pandemic or maintain business that you had?
We were closed for six weeks at the beginning of the pandemic. We were only seeing emergencies once a week. Then, when we opened, we started getting a lot of referrals from PatientPop because a lot of doctors in our area retired. Also, we were one of the few ophthalmological clinics that were open at the time, so that really helped us get a lot of new referrals.
We are very busy at the moment. We have three offices and seven doctors. They already have a good reputation because of their work but, now, with PatientPop, we get all of these reviews. When people search for an eye doctor, and they see that you have 4.0 out of 5.0, they get that impression that something good must be happening there.
Like I mentioned before, we’re just able to be found easily here. Before you would put “eye doctor,” and we would be on the third page of Google. Now, we’re on the first page in certain ZIP codes.
I think it's fair to say you adopted digital healthcare technology and PatientPop ahead of your competitors. How do you feel that’s benefited your practice?
Well, we got referred to PatientPop by another ophthalmologist. We wanted to improve our presence online, and it definitely helped. People can just find us easier, and that’s one of the reasons we got into PatientPop a year before the pandemic.
We always ask, “Who referred you here? How did you find us?” The patient will say, “Yeah, I found you online.” But you know, maybe one patient out of 10 used to say that. Now, we have seven patients out of 10 that say they found us because of Google. So, there’s definitely an improvement on that.
What’s your favorite thing about the PatientPop platform?
You know, the testimonials that patients put on our website and, honestly, the patient feedback.
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