Infectious Disease
Yelp reviews of medical facilities can reveal local health inequalities
December 03, 2021
Read for 2 minutes
Source / information
Disclosure:
Neither dealers nor Stokes report relevant financial information. Please refer to the study for all relevant financial information from the other authors.
ADD SUBJECT TO EMAIL ALERTS
Receive an email when new articles are published on
Please enter your email address to receive an email when new articles are published on . “data-action =” subscribe “> Subscribe
We could not process your request. Please try again later. If this problem persists, please contact [email protected].
Back to Healio
Counties with major healthcare facilities that had lower ratings on Yelp also had higher death rates, according to the data.
“Patient experience and satisfaction with health care are increasingly recognized as important indicators of the quality of health care, but data on these factors are collected less frequently.” Daniel Stokes, MD, a Penn Medicine Center for Digital Health researcher and an internal medicine resident at UCLA Health, and colleagues wrote. “Patient experience could also be linked to county mortality, but these relationships have not been well explored.”
Researchers conducted a retrospective, cross-sectional, population-based study of Yelp performance reviews for 95,120 major healthcare facilities in 1,301 states from January 1, 2015 to December 31, 2019. The essential health care facilities defined are the services offered that must be covered by the health insurance plans of the Marketplace: outpatient patient services; Emergency services; Hospitalization; Pregnancy, maternity and newborn care; Mental health and substance use disorder services including behavioral medicine treatment; Prescription drugs; Rehabilitation and post-doctoral training services and equipment; Laboratory services; Preventive and wellness services and chronic disease management; and oral and visual aids for children.
The results, published in JAMA Network Open, showed that at the county level, a one point increase in the average Yelp rating was associated with an average age-adjusted decrease of 18.05 deaths per 100,000 people (P <0.001). The average rating of the institutions analyzed at district level over the period under review, with one being the worst and five being the best, was 2.9 stars.
The researchers also found that words related to time such as “minutes”, “hours”, “finally”, “waiting” and “schedules”; Words used to describe the payment, including “money”, “insurance” and “payment”; and words related to interactions with other people, such as “rude,” “narrate,” or “narrated” were more likely to appear in one-star ratings in high-mortality circles. On the contrary, words like “friendly,” “kind,” and “staff” were used more frequently in five-star ratings in counties with high mortality rates.
In a press release, Stokes said the results showed that “patients’ attitudes about the care they receive affects how they interact with health care and, in turn, their own health and wellbeing.”
“Ideally, this democratization of information can help us improve health care for all and reduce our blind spots.” Raina Kaufmann, MD, Director of the Penn Medicine Center for Digital Health said in the press release.
References:
Healthcare.gov. What Marketplace Health Insurance Plans Cover. https://www.healthcare.gov/coverage/what-marketplace-plans-cover/. Accessed November 15, 2021.
Stokes DC et al. JAMA Netw Open. 2021; doi: 10.1001 / jamanetworkopen.2021.27799.
Yelp star ratings at health care facilities can reveal differences in mortality rates at the county level. https://penntoday.upenn.edu/news/yelp-star-ratings-may-reveal-county-level-death-rate-disparities. Published October 19, 2021. Accessed November 15, 2021.
ADD SUBJECT TO EMAIL ALERTS
Receive an email when new articles are published on
Please enter your email address to receive an email when new articles are published on . “data-action =” subscribe “> Subscribe
We could not process your request. Please try again later. If this problem persists, please contact [email protected].
Back to Healio