Do Facebook Recommendations Matter for a Medical Practice?

A dermatology office asked us this last month, almost sheepishly, like it was a dumb question. "Does anyone even care about our Facebook reviews anymore? We have four recommendations from 2021 and that's it." It is not a dumb question at all. It is one a lot of practice owners are secretly wondering, because Facebook changed the rules a while back and never really explained it, and Google now soaks up all the attention.

So let us settle it. Do Facebook recommendations still matter for a medical practice, or is that page just a relic you keep because deleting it feels wrong? The short answer: they matter less than Google, more than you think, and in a way most owners have completely misunderstood.

First, what a Facebook recommendation even is now

Here is the part that trips people up. Facebook used to let you leave a 1 to 5 star review, the same as Google or Yelp. In 2018 they scrapped that. They replaced it with Recommendations: a plain yes or no question, "Do you recommend this place?", plus a comment box and optional photos. There is no average score out of five anymore. Your page just shows how many people recommend you and what they said.

That change matters because it shifts what the signal means. A Google rating is a scoreboard. A Facebook recommendation is closer to a friend vouching for you. It is softer and fuzzier, but it is also more personal, and it shows up in a place your competitors on Google never touch: inside your community's actual conversations.

The number that should stop you from ignoring Facebook

It is easy to assume Facebook is where your aunt shares minion memes and nothing important happens. The data says otherwise. According to the Pew Research Center, about 68% of US adults use Facebook, which keeps it the most used platform in the country after YouTube. It is not a fading channel. It is where two out of three of your potential patients already are.

And who leans on it hardest matters even more for healthcare. Facebook over indexes with adults over 40 and with parents, the exact people filling a family practice, a dental chair, an optometry schedule, or a med spa. If your patient base skews older or runs on busy moms coordinating the whole family's care, Facebook is not a nice to have. It is where a big slice of them live online.

Where recommendations actually do their work

This is the piece most owners miss. They picture a patient landing on the practice's Facebook page, scrolling the reviews tab, and deciding. That almost never happens. The real action is in local Facebook groups.

Think about the neighborhood and mom groups in your town. Every single day someone posts "Can anyone recommend a good pediatric dentist near [town]?" or "Looking for a dermatologist who actually listens, help." Those threads get dozens of replies, and people tag practices by name. That is a Facebook recommendation in the wild, and it carries more weight than almost anything else online, because it comes from a real neighbor answering a real question, not a stranger's star rating.

When your practice gets named in those threads over and over, you win patients who never opened Google at all. And when someone does click through to check you out, a page with recent recommendations and active posts confirms the tip. A page with four dusty reviews from 2021 works against you. The recommendation on your page is not the whole play. It is the backup that makes the word of mouth stick.

So do they matter? Here is the honest ranking

We are not going to pretend Facebook beats Google, because it does not. If you only have energy for one thing, it is Google reviews, full stop, and we broke down exactly how many review sites are worth your time in how many review sites does a medical practice need. But "not first" is very different from "does not matter." Here is how we tell practices to think about it:

• Google reviews: your top priority. This is where people actively shop for a doctor and compare ratings. It also feeds your map ranking and what the AI tools say about you.
• Facebook recommendations and group mentions: your social proof layer. This is where word of mouth happens at scale, especially for older patients and parents. Cheap to maintain, real payoff.
• A living Facebook page: the trust check. When a referred or recommended patient looks you up, an active page says you are real, open, and paying attention.

The mistake is treating Facebook as a second Google and getting frustrated that it does not work like one. It is not a scoreboard. It is a megaphone for the patients who already like you.

The HIPAA trap nobody warns you about

Here is where practices get themselves in trouble, and it applies to Facebook exactly like it does to Google. When someone leaves you a recommendation, positive or negative, you cannot reply in a way that confirms they are a patient or reveals anything about their care. Thanking "Susan" for trusting you with her procedure feels warm and personal. It is also a potential HIPAA violation, because you just confirmed Susan is a patient and hinted at what she came in for.

The fix is simple once you know it. Keep replies generic and human. Thank people for the kind words without confirming care details. For a complaint, never argue the facts in public, just acknowledge it and move it to a phone call. We laid out the full playbook, with example wording, in how to reply to reviews without violating HIPAA. Read it before you type another public reply anywhere.

How to make your Facebook page actually pull its weight

None of this takes a huge budget. It takes a system and a little consistency. A few moves that punch above their cost:

1. Turn recommendations on and check your page is claimed

Some practices have Recommendations switched off in their page settings without realizing it, so patients literally cannot leave one. Confirm it is on, confirm you actually control the page, and make sure your hours, address, phone, and booking link are correct. A page with wrong info does more harm than no page. If you are still weighing whether the page is even worth keeping, we covered that in does a medical practice need a Facebook page.

2. Ask for recommendations where patients already are

You already ask happy patients for Google reviews. For the ones who practically live on Facebook, point them there instead. A quick "if you're on Facebook, a recommendation on our page really helps other families find us" works. Ask a couple of patients a week, not twenty in one burst, so it builds a steady, believable trickle instead of a suspicious spike.

3. Keep the page alive

An abandoned page is worse than no page, because it signals a practice that has checked out. You do not need to post daily. A real photo of the team, a helpful tip, a holiday hours update, a patient win shared with permission. Enough that a visitor sees a place that is clearly open and human. This is exactly the kind of steady, on brand presence our healthcare social media management handles so owners do not have to think about it.

4. Send them somewhere that converts

A recommendation does its job by sending a curious person to look you up. If that trail ends on a slow, confusing site with the phone number buried at the bottom, you lose them anyway. The social proof gets someone to the door. A website that answers questions and books patients is what gets them through it. The two only work as a pair.

Where EtherealMinds fits

We treat reputation as one connected system, not a pile of separate profiles. Google first, because that is where the searching happens. Then a Facebook presence that stays active and catches the word of mouth in local groups. Then a website that turns all of that curiosity into a booked appointment. And through the whole thing, replies that stay warm and human without ever crossing the HIPAA line. It is the same idea behind everything we build: meet patients where they already are, and make the next step easy.

So back to that dermatology office and their four lonely recommendations from 2021. The answer was not to abandon Facebook. It was to switch recommendations back on, get their happy patients pointing there, and keep the page alive so the next time a neighbor asks that mom group for a good dermatologist, the practice is both named in the thread and worth clicking on. That is when a Facebook recommendation stops being a relic and starts being a patient.