Nursing homes are always under pressure to receive stellar online reviews. But the aggressive tactics of one Massachusetts facility has raised questions of how far they should go to get 5-star reviews.
Hathorne Hill, a 120-bed home in Danvers, MA, is offering a chance to win a KitchenAid stand mixer in return for 5-star reviews left on Google before the winner is selected on Jan. 2.
The mixer is on display in the facility’s lobby and is advertised as having a $480 value.
A study of nursing home Yelp reviews found that a 1-star increase on the social review site led to 2.6% more new Medicare admissions than a 1-star increase in ratings from the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services did.
While the practice of incentivizing reviews is not against the law, it has come under increased scrutiny from both private entities and regulatory bodies.
In June, the Federal Trade Commission proposed regulations that would crack down on providing incentives that are contingent on leaving either positive or negative reviews.
“Our proposed rule on fake reviews shows that we’re using all available means to attack deceptive advertising in the digital age,” explained Samuel Levine, director of the FTC Bureau of Consumer Protection. “The rule would trigger civil penalties for violators and should help level the playing field for honest companies.”
It is against Google policy to incentivize reviews. Google is known to remove reviews it believes violate its rules and will even suspend business profiles in more extreme cases.
The display at Hathorne Hill asks potential reviewers to “Please mention in your review that your Google review is incentivized.” A facility representative from parent company Genesis HealthCare told The Salem News that this clause was added after the company was informed that its review contest violated Google’s policies.
Paul Lanzikos, co-founder of Dignity Alliance Massachusetts told The Salem News that he questioned the legitimacy of the operator’s Google review strategy.
“If it’s not unethical, it definitely borders on being unethical,” he said.
Hathorne Hill currently has an overall 3-star CMS rating and lands just above the state’s average on the Massachusetts Health and Human Services nursing home rating website. Its Google star rating, however, is 4.6, based on 168 total reviews. Only 10 reviews left within the last two months are viewable. Four of those reviewers left a 5-star rating.
Two other reviewers left a 1-star review and warned readers to not trust other reviews because of the prize being offered, with one equating it to a form of “bribery” — illustrating another potential form of blowback that can follow attempts to influence community reviews.
Representatives of Hathorne Hill did not respond to a McKnight’s request for comment.
