How OrthoGeorgia turned 65 years of great care into 4.7+ star ratings across every provider and location
2,414%
Boost in Online Reviews
8%
Increase in urgent care appointments
OrthoGeorgia has been a fixture in the central Georgia community since 1961. What started as a single surgeon’s vision to bring specialty orthopedic care to an underserved region has grown into one of the state’s most comprehensive musculoskeletal practices, with 24 surgeons, 6 locations, 2 surgery centers, and 2 dedicated orthopedic urgent care centers.
The practice is a major employer in the region, and has had a significant financial impact over its tenure. In addition to the many lives positively impacted in the community, its surgeons have held leadership positions at the national level, including within the American Academy of Orthopaedic Surgeons and the American Society for Surgery of the Hand.
The Problem
Patients across central Georgia have trusted OrthoGeorgia for over 60 years, and for most of that time, their reputation lived almost entirely offline. Atlanta-based orthopedic practices started expanding south into OrthoGeorgia’s market, bringing bigger marketing budgets and more established online presences.
Susan Scruggs, OrthoGeorgia’s Director of Marketing and Strategic Initiatives, understood the importance of enhancing OrthoGeorgia’s online presence. But for Scruggs, collecting patient feedback was never the end goal. It was the starting point.
“OrthoGeorgia is the premier orthopedic practice and offers the most comprehensive care,” she said. “How can we highlight that?”
Word of mouth had always been OrthoGeorgia’s top referral driver. Patients recommended the practice to friends and family regularly, but those conversations weren’t happening where new patients were searching: Google, Healthgrades, and other online directories.
“I knew we had excellent patient feedback,” Scruggs said. “It was just a matter of capturing it and sharing it.”
“I knew we had excellent patient feedback. It was just a matter of capturing it and sharing it.”
There was no consistent, scalable way to capture feedback across 6 locations and 24 providers, and the urgent care centers were even harder to find. Both were located inside physician offices in Warner Robins and Macon and neither had a standalone Google Business Profile (GBP) listing. Without those listings, the centers didn’t appear when patients searched for orthopedic urgent care on Google Maps.
The Solution
Seeking a way to get OrthoGeorgia’s online presence to reflect what patients already knew, the group’s leadership team made the decision to partner with rater8, the leader in healthcare reputation management. Scruggs reallocated budget from traditional advertising to invest in a strategy that better aligns with how patients search for care today. She had good reason: 84% of patients check online reviews before choosing a new provider, and more than half read at least 6 reviews before booking an appointment.
“I decided to eliminate a billboard to fit rater8 into my budget originally,” Scruggs recounted. “Now rater8 is a top priority when it comes to our marketing budget.”
“rater8 is a top priority when it comes to our marketing budget.”
OrthoGeorgia’s launch of raVE (rater8 Visibility Engine) came during COVID, which added a layer of complexity. Google was temporarily holding reviews, and staff across the practice were stretched thin; however, Scruggs was deliberate about the rollout, letting early results build momentum rather than pushing for immediate adoption across the organization. Once physicians saw their colleagues’ reviews and ratings improve, they wanted in.
rater8’s integration with athenahealth meant automated review requests were up and running in no time. Patients received automated review requests and satisfaction surveys immediately after their visits with no manual effort from staff.
Scruggs worked closely with her rater8 client success manager to make sure OrthoGeorgia’s listings were accurate and consistent across Google, Healthgrades, Vitals, WebMD, and the other directories that feed into AI-generated search results. One notable change was removing the practice name from individual physician Google Business Profile listings. This strategic adjustment gave each provider a more discoverable profile across platforms and made it easier for both patients and AI search tools to find accurate information.
The OrthoGeorgia team didn’t treat raVE as a review tool alone. They used the platform’s benchmarking and survey capabilities to put easy-to-digest patient sentiment scores in front of physicians and leadership teams who might not have engaged with the feedback otherwise.
“The benchmarking has provided great insights for a variety of departments, such as our call center, front desk, and surgery center,” Scruggs said.
Before raVE, Scruggs was personally typing or copy-pasting every review response for 24 providers across 6 locations. With raVE’s AI-supported review responses, that work now happens automatically. “The AI responses make replying to every review so much easier,” she said.
Replies to low-star reviews also automatically include Scruggs’ direct phone number, creating a service recovery loop so every patient concern is brought directly to her attention.
Beyond patient feedback, raVE’s employee satisfaction survey results revealed that staff felt disconnected from a practice growing faster than internal communications could keep up. Scruggs addressed this head-on by launching regular intranet updates showcasing new services, new physicians, and new locations. She also spearheaded a “Spotlight on Service” program, where any employee mentioned by name in a patient review gets entered into a monthly drawing.
“If a patient remembers one employee’s name, that person was very valuable to us and to them,” she shared.
The Results
The impact of raVE is evident across every OrthoGeorgia provider and location.
Boosted online reviews by 2,414%
In the year before raVE, OrthoGeorgia captured just 294 new online reviews across all major healthcare review platforms. Within their first full year with raVE, that number jumped to 7,390 reviews, a 2,414% increase. The difference wasn’t in the care being delivered, but in giving patients a fast and easy way to talk about their experiences.
Cultivated a 4.7+ star rating for every provider and location
With the influx of positive verified patient feedback, OrthoGeorgia also improved their online ratings for every provider and location. The proportion of negative reviews dropped by almost 90%. Every provider at OrthoGeorgia now holds a 4.7-star rating or higher, and both urgent care locations now sit at close to 4.9 stars.
As ratings climbed and reviews increased, the urgent care centers started seeing an 8% increase in appointments booked since March 2024, when those centers got their own Google Business Profiles, and raVE started sending automated review requests.
Increased local and AI search visibility
Thanks to a steady stream of reviews and consistent provider listings, OrthoGeorgia’s providers now appear in Google’s local 3-pack under results for “best orthopedic surgeon in Locust Grove, GA.” They also appear in AI-powered search, such as ChatGPT results for “who is the best orthopedic surgeon in Locust Grove, GA?”
This means the practice shows up no matter where a patient starts their search for care. This kind of visibility is the result of listings management work Scruggs did with her rater8 client success manager early on.
raVE’s impact also revealed itself in GBP engagement. From February 2025 to February 2026, OrthoGeorgia has seen a 20% increase in total views on their GBPs, meaning significantly more prospective patients are discovering OrthoGeorgia via Google search results.
Notably, this increase in GBP views came well after OrthoGeorgia’s initial raVE rollout, which means patient discovery is still growing rather than tapering off.
Raised patient satisfaction scores from 4.80 to 4.94
OrthoGeorgia was already scoring a 4.80 out of 5 on the survey question “Were all of your questions addressed?”, but Scruggs wanted to know what was hiding inside that number.
What she found was specific: patients seeing certain physicians consistently felt rushed during their appointments. Scruggs brought the numbers to those providers and proposed a change: the “Commit to Sit” initiative. If a physician sits down during the visit, patients perceive the interaction as longer and more attentive, even when the actual visit length stays the same. Because of this change, scores on the question “Were all of your questions addressed?” increased from 4.80 to 4.94 out of 5 — a near perfect score.
“The original reason we chose rater8 was to increase our reviews and ratings,” Scruggs shared. “But it has really offered so much more.”
Beyond the numbers, raVE data helped Scruggs drive changes she couldn’t have made without it. Scruggs turned patient feedback into physician coaching, staff recognition programs, and an internal communications overhaul. And with a new office set to open in 2027, OrthoGeorgia’s reputation finally reflects what patients in central Georgia have known for over 60 years: this is where you go for excellent orthopedic care.
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