What words in online reviews tell us about hospital visits
Online reviews can provide insight into what influences whether patients have a ‘good’ or ‘bad’ health care experience, a Penn Medicine analysis shows.
2 min. read
Can simple words like “and” or “then” in online reviews help health care providers learn about their patients’ experiences?
New research from a team at Penn’s Perelman School of Medicine and the Leonard Davis Institute for Health Economics (LDI) shows they can, with analyses revealing the most common theme in negative reviews of health care facilities involves communication and administrative issues, while complimentary reviews focused on reassuring and gratifying interactions with clinicians and staff. This was uncovered by an analysis of the specific words and terms used in online reviews, which was then used to find correlations with positive or negative reviews. The work is published in JAMA Network Open.
Because so many are guided in their choices by online reviews of many different industries and products, the researchers view online reviews as an untapped resource for discovering true patient sentiments.
“The current ways in which health care facilities measure the patient experience and then take action often takes a lot of time, creating a system that lags between the actual encounter and improvements,” says senior author Anish Agarwal, deputy director of the Center for Insights to Outcomes and an assistant professor of emergency medicine. “If the real-time data from online reviews could be incorporated into tools that are easily viewed by health systems and their providers, they could make almost immediate changes for more positive experiences.”
Positive interactions with clinicians and staff emphasizing kindness was a top theme in the positive reviews. “Friendly,” “helpful,” and “kind,” were all top terms. According to the analysis, the ability of staff to relieve patients’ anxiety was also a top theme uncovered, resulting in “nervous” and “scared” being terms that were actually associated with positive reviews.
Health care reviews took a significant dip amid the COVID pandemic, and the sentiments have yet to rebound. However, the research team believes that their work points to real opportunities to improve care.
“We believe these are systemic issues rather than isolated complaints,” says first author Neil Sehgal, an associate fellow at LDI. “We’re interested in understanding how specific facility characteristics, such as size, ownership, or patient volume, might shape patient sentiment and communication challenges.”
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