Yelp scores of health-related facilities might expose community health and fitness inequities

Counties with important wellbeing treatment services that had decrease ratings on Yelp also experienced higher mortality fees, data showed.

“Patient expertise and gratification with health care are significantly regarded as crucial steps of health treatment good quality, but knowledge on these variables are fewer extensively collected,” Daniel Stokes, MD, a researcher with the Penn Medicine Heart for Digital Health and fitness and an inner drugs resident at UCLA Health and fitness, and colleagues wrote. “Patient experience may also be involved with county-degree mortality, but these associations have not nevertheless been properly explored.”

The researchers carried out a retrospective, inhabitants-based, cross-sectional study of Yelp functionality reviews for 95,120 crucial overall health treatment amenities in 1,301 U.S. counties from Jan. 1, 2015, to Dec. 31, 2019. Critical overall health care facilities have been outlined as all those that available expert services that Marketplace health and fitness insurance plan plans should cover: ambulatory individual products and services unexpected emergency services hospitalization pregnancy, maternity and new child treatment mental health and substance use problem providers, which includes behavioral health and fitness treatment prescription remedies rehabilitative and habilitative services and products laboratory services preventive and wellness solutions and persistent ailment administration and oral and vision care for youngsters.

The conclusions, released in JAMA Network Open up, indicated that at the county level, a a person-issue raise in a signify Yelp ranking was joined to a indicate age-altered lessen of 18.05 deaths for every single 100,000 people (P < .001). The mean county-level rating of the analyzed facilities across the study period, with one being the worst and five being the best, was 2.9 stars.

The researchers also noted that words related to time, such as “minutes,” “hours,” “finally,” “waiting” and “schedules” words to describe payment, including “money,” “insurance” and “pay” and words related to interactions with other people, such as “rude,” “tell” or “told” appeared more frequently in one-star reviews in counties with high mortality. On the contrary, words such as “friendly,” “nice” and “staff” were used more frequently in five-star reviews in counties with high mortality.

In a press release, Stokes said the results show that “how patients feel about the care they are receiving has an impact on how they engage with health care and, in turn, their own health and well-being.”

“Ideally this democratization of information can help us to improve health care for all and reduce our blind spots,” Raina Merchant, MD, director of the Penn Medicine Center for Digital Health, said in the release.

References:

Healthcare.gov. What Marketplace health insurance plans cover. https://www.healthcare.gov/coverage/what-marketplace-plans-cover/. Accessed Nov. 15, 2021.

Stokes DC, et al. JAMA Netw Open. 2021doi: 10.1001/jamanetworkopen.2021.27799.

Yelp star ratings on health care facilities may reveal county-level death rate disparities. https://penntoday.upenn.edu/news/yelp-star-ratings-may-reveal-county-level-death-rate-disparities. Published Oct. 19, 2021. Accessed Nov. 15, 2021.