Are Google Reviews Indicative of How Competent and Well Liked OBGYNS are in South Florida?
Sometimes when one of my South Florida Birth Photography clients asks me to recommend some Obstetricians for her, or for a friend or family member of her, I rely a lot on google and will type in “OBGYN in Boca Raton” and sometimes “Best OBGYN in South Florida” if my client needs someone in Broward County, Fort Lauderdale, or Miami (though I barely know any OBGYNs in Miami!)
I have come to rely on Google more than I probably should, and while some professionals have PDFs and info graphics with their favorite providers, I don’t really have everyone in one place, and besides, why update my own documents when Google does that for you :)
While looking up the websites / phone numbers / addresses and other doctor names at certain practices I often refer to, the thought occurred to me that it would be interesting for me to take a look at how many Google Reviews all of the OBGYNs listed on Google in Broward County and near Boca Raton have compared to the OBGYNs who I most often refer to.
Best OBGYN in South Florida
I suppose it is interesting to consider how having a lot of Google Reviews, especially if they are 4.0 stars or higher, can make you and your Obstetrical practice appear on Google, especially to couples who use Google search terms like “Best OBGYN near me” or “Best OBGYN in South Florida”.
Do Expecting Couples Pick their Doctor (to deliver their baby) Based off Google Reviews?
I am curious what kind of impact Google Reviews and having more of them have on couples who are solely going off of Google Reviews when doing their own research to find a good provider for their prenatal care during pregnancy, for their newborn baby’s birth / delivery and for their postpartum care.
I am curious if certain couples feel that Google Reviews are indicative of how competent and well liked an OBGYN is. And if certain couples do indeed feel that Google Reviews indicate which providers they should consider hiring, how many couples out there are really making their decisions about hiring a Medical care provider such as an OBGYN or Midwife solely based off of Google Reviews.
Whether its less than a quarter of expecting couples or more than half who are hiring their OBGYN based off of Google Reviews only, I still find it fascinating to take a look at what some of the local Obstetrical Doctors practices in Broward County and the surrounding areas of Boca Raton are scoring on their reviews, and how many reviews they have compared to my personal experiences as Birth Photographer in South Florida over the last 9 years capturing parents first moments meeting their newborn baby (followed by some lovely South Florida Newborn Photography and Maternity Photo Sessions in Boca Raton during their pregnancies).
1,000 Google Reviews or 200 Google Reviews?
I think before we dive in any further, a great question to ask is why Google Reviews could possibly mean this much to expecting families who are looking for a great Doctor to deliver their baby. Google Reviews are considered mostly unbiased, right? Left by people who are honest about their experiences. But if we put aside the fact that I have been hearing that many companies are paying to delete negative comments on their Google Accounts, to which I have seen zero evidence online proving this, the more important question to me is actually what impact does 1,000 Google Reviews for ONE OBGYN team make on an expecting couple, and is that expecting couple more likely to hire that OBGYN practice or a practice that has only 200 Google Reviews?
To start, the OBGYNs and their teams that have been the doctors that my South Florida Birth Photography clients have hired most commonly over the years have been:
BOCA RATON OBGYNS MY SOUTH FLORIDA BIRTH PHOTOGRAPHY CLIENTS HAVE USED
Dr. David Lubetkin of Boca Midwifery, Dr. Jane Rudolph, Dr. Gostal Arcelin, Dr. Rachel Ciaccio, Dr. Lauren Feingold, Dr. Stewart Newman, Dr. Tara Ruberg, Dr. Kristine Tibavisky of Women’s Health Partners (also with offices in Boynton Beach), Dr. Samuel Abramovitz, Dr. Dana Schey, Dr. Kenneth Konsker of Lucina Women’s Health, Dr. Ty Swartzlander of Boca Babes, Dr. Jennifer Daif Parker of Delray Beach OB/GYN Associates, Dr. Kathleen Thompson, Dr. Frederick Silfen and all of these doctors have delivered my Birth Photography clients over the last 9 years at either Baptist Health Boca Raton Regional Hospital (formerly known as Boca Community Hospital) or West Boca Medical Center Labor and Delivery.
CORAL SPRINGS OBGYNS MY SOUTH FLORIDA BIRTH PHOTOGRAPHY CLIENTS HAVE USED
Dr. Mitchell Feldman, Dr. Tali Rombro, Dr. Brooke Slaton, and Dr. Heather Gabai Hernandez of Omega Women’s Care and Dr. Hala Bunni at HCA Florida Royal Palm OB/GYN (who also works on the same team as Christina Fallacaro Certified Nurse Midwife who has worked with my past Birth Photography clients and also Midwife Nicole Navarrette and these doctors have delivered my past South Florida Birth Photography clients at either HCA Florida Northwest Hospital (formerly known as Northwest Medical Center) or Broward Health Coral Springs
FORT LAUDERDALE & MIAMI OBGYNS MY SOUTH FLORIDA BIRTH PHOTOGRAPHY CLIENTS HAVE USED
Dr. Channing Coe of OBGYN By the Sea, Dr. Delisa Skeete Henry of Serene Health OB/GYN and Wellness and both of these doctors have delivered my past South Florida Birth Photography clients at Broward Health Medical Center (formerly known as Broward Health General Hospital)
Dr. Mauricio Bitran on the same team as Dr. Mitchell Bitran at Bitran and Rivera Obstetrics & Gynecology, and they delivered my past South Florida Birth Photography clients at Mount Sinai in Miami (but I do the least amount of births there - one South Florida Birth Photography client at Mount Sinai per due month)
Dr. Rachel Bernstein and Dr. Patricia Calvo who previously delivered my South Florida Birth Photography clients at Holy Cross Hospital in Fort Lauderdale which no longer has a labor and delivery unit, I am not sure where these OBs deliver these days, though I’ve heard of some potential physician privileges at Baptist Health Boca Raton Regional Hospital from one of my former South Florida Birth Photography clients.
OBGYNS WHO HAVE PRIVILEGES AT JUPITER MEDICAL CENTER MY SOUTH FLORIDA BIRTH PHOTOGRAPHY CLIENTS HAVE USED
Dr. Dudley Brown of the Brown Institute for Health and Wellness
Dr. Marc Kaufman and Dr. Jeffrey Litt of Partners in Women’s Health in Jupiter
*Note about Missing Providers from my personal experiences list
Wow this a lot of Doctors when I look at them all together! And they only account for a certain small percentage of births I have attended, because many of my clients have instead hired a Certified Nurse Midwife for their hospital delivery or a home birth midwife for their home birth or local birth center birth. And still there are some OBGYN names left out because either I only had 1 delivery with 1 South Florida Birth Photography client who used that doctor so I don’t recall the doctor’s name, or I definitely left out the doctors who caused my Birth Photography clients excessive emotional distress that I would not be able to have a single positive thing to say about this traumatic births and would rather not list their names here. And still there could be OBGYNs names I have forgotten as part of this hefty list.
Favorite OBGYNS in South Florida
It is important for me to indicate, that among all of the Obstetricians names and practices I listed above are my favorite OBGYNs in South Florida. And they are my favorites for a few possible reasons: I’ve either had multiple births with multiple Birth Photography clients who hired this Doctor many times, the Doctor has left a lasting impression on me as a mother and birth worker, enough for me to have a really great opinion of them as an OB/GYN, or maybe I just happen to appreciate this doctor as a person! Some - all of the above!
Shocking Facts about Doctor’s Google Reviews
So you can imagine my surprise when I scoured Google Reviews and found that from all the OBGYNs I have met over the last 9 years with my South Florida Birth Photography clients, most of their practices have no more than 452 Google Reviews! This is shocking when you comparing these numbers to the top OBGYN Google Review performers in the area (completely unrelated to their performance as actual obstetricians I am only commenting on their Google Review achievements) which stand in the 700-1100 Google Review range, and these are practices and doctors I’ve never heard of and have never even worked with in nearly a decade of being South Florida’s Birth Photographer, Newborn Photographer, Maternity Photographer and Family Photographer.
While I know South Florida is massive, and since I predominantly serve the tri-county area, I’ll refer to that when I say it is 1279 square miles with a population of 6.14 million people. While there’s no telling how many of that population encompasses expecting mothers without doing further research, I do know that there are around 200-600 deliveries per month at each South Florida Hospital on average. So while it’s not really that far fetched to assume I’d know every single OBGYN in South Florida, it does indeed surprise me that the highest Google Review performing offices are practices I’ve never come across a day in my life.
Medicaid vs. Birth Photography
I do think this bears the question, how many of the practices with Google Reviews serve a population of birthing families that appreciate Birth Photography? The metropolitan area of our tri-county South Florida area has a 19.8 poverty rate, way higher than the national average. And 16.4% of The metropolitan area of our tri-county South Florida area is on Medicaid (source: datausa.io) and otherwise don’t have access to health coverage or employee plans. That shocking 19.8 poverty rate definitely encroaches one way or another on the population of pregnant women seeking to hire a professional Newborn Photographer, and the poverty rate is higher in areas of Miami Dade County and Broward County than it is in the City of Boca Raton where the average cost of living has an index of 114.1 which means the total cost of living is 14.1 percent higher than the US average and a typical home averages $546,300 and rent is $2330 for a two bedroom apartment (according to bestplaces.net)
Perhaps the main reason why my path does not cross with these high Google Ranking practices is due to higher rates of patients under the poverty line. Of course you cannot be certain without knowing the demographic breakdown of the practices, so this very well could not be the case, and I may have simply never crossed paths with these practices because I haven’t reached those Obstetrical teams or perhaps their patients have no interest in Birth Photography.
There’s More to OBGYNS than their Google Reviews
I firmly believe that expecting couples who are basing their decision on what OB/GYN to hire for their baby’s birth should take the volume of Google Reviews with a grain of salt.
It’s important to remember that these providers specialize in maternal care, not how to rank higher on google.
A majority of these providers also do not hire an outside marketing team to get them to where they need to be on Google.
It’s also actually really hard to get newly postpartum moms to leave you a Google Review when they have their hands full with healing themselves from their delivery while also breastfeeding or feeding, changing, burping and all the aspects of taking care of a newborn baby.
A majority of doctors are not hypervigilant of how they are even doing on Google, they are so invested in patient care, they are not checking their Google Reviews.
While its certainly impressive that certain OBGYNS in Fort Lauderdale are managing to get upwards of 1100 Google Reviews, its also important to remember that these OB/GYNs in Fort Lauderdale could very well be seeing an astronomically higher volume of patients than their Coral Springs, Boca Raton and Jupiter counterparts, who work out of smaller Hospitals with less labor and delivery rooms.
OB/GYNs listed in this blog post from my personal experiences over the last 9 years have taken amazing care of my South Florida Birth Photography clients over the years, and certainly should not be scored based on how many Google Reviews have been left for their Obstetrician Practices.
All this in consideration, let’s remember….
Don’t Judge an OBGYN by the volume of their Google Reviews
If you are needing some input on where to start when interviewing OBGYNs during your pregnancy for your upcoming baby’s birth, you can start here with…
“Questions to Ask at your first prenatal visit”
(clickable link)
This link with Questions to Ask at your first prenatal visit lists excellent questions you can ask during consultations but if you are past that part and in your first, second or even third trimester, don’t hesitate to get my printable list so you can bring these questions in during your prenatal visits. My biggest piece of advice as being a mother myself and seeing over 200 South Florida mothers (both first time moms and 8th time moms and everything in between) go through pregnancies with various Doctors, if you start asking questions and something feels off, because maybe your Doctor gave you a subpar answer or was completely dismissive, or said something that set off a red flag in your instincts, it’s never too late to investigate changing your OBGYN. This link also works great if you are planning to give birth with a Certified Nurse Midwife in the hospital.
If you are planning to give birth at home or in a local birth center, you can check out my alternative link with 36 Questions to Ask a Home Birth Midwife (clickable link)
If you have questions for Paulina Splechta Photography
Would like a list of questions to ask your OBGYN or Midwife
Would like to inquire on availability for your due date
